The House met at 9:00 a.m.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): Order, please!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

This is the first opportunity available to the House to extend our congratulations to the Honourable James Gushue on his appointment as the Chief Justice of Newfoundland, the highest judicial position in the Province. Its occupant also holds an important role in the structure of government; as the Chief Justice he is also the Administrator, the person who represents the Crown in the Absence of the Lieutenant-Governor.

Chief Justice Gushue has been a member of the Court of Appeal for twenty years. He is a distinguished legal scholar. He is certainly well known to all members of the House, although I hasten to add he is known principally, as should be the case, in his role as a judge. Members will recall, for example, that indeed the Chief Justice was here, and was one of two judges who administered our Oaths to us on Wednesday past.

I know that all members will join me in welcoming Chief Justice Gushue's appointment.

I wish, Mr. Speaker, at this time as well to pay tribute to the Honourable Noel Goodridge, the retiring Chief Justice. He is a distinguished and widely respected jurist whose judgements are widely regarded as written models of legal scholarship. On behalf of the House, and indeed on behalf of the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, I wish to thank him for his immense contribution to our Province.

Mr. Speaker, if I may, a second statement at this time.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave, or do we want to have the Opposition respond?

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will just respond on behalf of the Official Opposition to the ministerial statement congratulating the Honourable James Gushue on his appointment. I'm sure he will bring to that position the skill, wisdom and knowledge that he has imparted in his previous role in the judiciary system. On behalf of the Opposition we also wish former Chief Justice Noel Goodridge well in his future endeavours. Chief Justice Goodridge was a person who imparted a very deep knowledge of legal matters and a great impartiality, and he brought a great amount of respect to the system.

On behalf of the Opposition, we extend congratulations and best wishes to both of those honoured gentlemen.

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Agreed.

MR. SPEAKER: Agreed.

The hon. the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi.

MR. HARRIS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to join with the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition in congratulating the new Chief Justice of Newfoundland, Chief Justice Gushue. I had the opportunity to personally congratulate him Wednesday, and I also want to join in paying great tribute to the magnificent contribution of Chief Justice Noel Goodridge to the Judiciary of Newfoundland. Having appeared before him on many occasions I am well aware of his significant legal ability and the contribution he has made over the years, and we thank him for that on behalf of the people of this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, may I ask members of the House, as well this morning, to join me in paying tribute to a Newfoundlander who rendered long and noteworthy service to our predecessors in the House of Assembly. I speak of Miss Katherine Murphy, who died in recent days.

Ms. Murphy, known as "Kit" to generations of parliamentarians, was the official stenographer (indeed she was the only one) in the House of Assembly from the mid-1950s to her retirement in 1975. Of course, none of us who sit in the House today were members of the Chamber at that time, but she was, I am told, as important and as essential to the operation of the House as was the Speaker of the day. She sat with her stenotype machine just inside the bar of this House, originally in the old Chamber of the Colonial Building and later on the 10th floor of this building. She recorded the debates faithfully - I am told on occasion too faithfully, for the liking of members who had perhaps misspoken themselves in this place. Word was that her transcription services were even then word perfect.

Kit Murphy was universally liked; she always had a smile and a kind word for all those who worked here. She lived a full and a happy life, and with the leave of the House I ask that the Clerk be directed to send an appropriate letter of condolences to her family, to extend our sympathy to them and to mark, and this is important, her contribution to the work of the House of Assembly, and indeed to the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, for many years.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I, too, on behalf of the Official Opposition send condolences to her family. The staff in the House are a very integral part of the functioning of this House, and I am sure the last thing members would want would be to be misquoted, and to make sure that things are very accurately recorded.

While I did not know her personally I did know about her, and once again I send condolences out to her family on this recent passing.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have questions for the Premier.

The UI Program since 1991-92 has brought over $1 billion into this Province and has been a significant part of the provincial economy.

In 1997-98, under the current structure without reform, there will be $670 million coming into the Newfoundland economy. When the proposed amendments to the UI Program, the new EI Program are in place, there will only be $500-and-some million, over $100 million less coming into this provincial economy.

I ask the Premier, what his government intends to do to compensate for this drastic impact that these amendments will have on the provincial economy?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question and for his great interest in this important social program which provides assistance to those in time of greatest need, a time when they have been displaced from their otherwise regular form of employment, and I want to assure the Leader of the Opposition that we have already begun to make representation to the Government of Canada, to ensure that any reform of the unemployment insurance system is a reform that does not discriminate against seasonal workers, specifically.

I have talked directly to the minister responsible and indeed, on behalf of the people of the Province, talked as well to the Prime Minister about seeking changes to the original reform bill, the proposed reform bill put before Parliament, that would ensure that the original proposal with respect to consecutive weeks of employment would be amended and the original proposal with respect to the intensity rule on the maximal insurable earnings for unemployment insurance is also amended.

Mr. Speaker, that representation is underway and we await the final deliberation and decisions of the minister who is responsible in Ottawa.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I will ask the Premier if he has received any commitments from the federal minister on those two aspects. The federal minister was quoted as saying, on February 9: on the two issues of consecutive weeks and on intensity rule, we are going to amend the legislation. Anybody who thinks I can't change my mind is wrong.

I ask the Premier, has he received a firm commitment from the federal minister that those changes on consecutive weeks and on the intensity rule will be changed?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: No, Mr. Speaker.

The Leader of the Opposition is doing very good research and I commend him for it. He has the exact quote of the federal minister in his hands so he is as well aware, as I am, of the position of the federal minister.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have been told that once the new system is fully implemented in the year 2001-2002, insurance costs will be reduced by approximately $2 billion per year, and out of that amount, $800 million will be reinvested into employment benefits. I ask the Premier, how much out of that $800 million will be reinvested here into employment in this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, the member is just now asking whether or not we can expect further changes in the way in which the unemployment insurance rules are going to apply in impact on seasonal workers, and he is asking for a firm commitment that changes will be considered. He is quoting directly himself from the newspaper the words of the minister who has the responsibility in Ottawa, the hon. Doug Young. He is asking me whether I concur with those words - I have said yes. I have gone on to indicate that the matter is now with the minister and a decision will be forthcoming. Then, in advance of having any chance to wait for that decision to come, he now wants to know what the final shape of the program will be and what the final dollar value of the reinvestment fund will be.

Mr. Speaker, I know that the Leader of the Opposition has a genuine concern in this regard but he knows also that he cannot have it both ways. We have to wait for the outcome of his deliberation.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

On December 1, 1995, the program was released indicating how much money would be reinvested, I say to the Premier. On December 2, the day afterwards, the federal Finance Minister, Mr. Martin, speaking at the University of Montreal, told Quebecers that they will receive $300 million out of that $800 million. Can't the Premier of this Province tell us, four months later, how much this Province is going to receive?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, it is only the first day in the first Question Period, and already, the Leader of the Opposition is getting himself mightily exercised.

Now, I say to him with great respect that I understand his interest in the matter and I assure him that his interest is certainly not greater than the interest on this side of the House, but until the public deliberations initiated by the federal minister are completed and until the recommendations of the Standing Committee of the House of Commons - of which I am sure my colleague opposite is aware, would not want to be asking questions unaware of the full process - are completed, surely until that process is completed, we ought to wait with some degree of patience for the final outcome of those deliberations.

When those deliberations are finished and when all of the fiscal impacts are known of changes to both the consecutive week rule and the intensity rule, both of which I know the leader opposite knows, have a direct fiscal impact on the program - the leader knows that - until that is done we are not going to get the final analysis of what the reinvestment fund will be. We have had some preliminary numbers. Let us wait for the changes that we have asked for to be implemented. And I can tell you that if I have to make a choice - I have no hesitation in saying this - between having an unemployment insurance program that treats seasonal workers in a fair and reasonable fashion, or a choice between gouging funds out of the pockets of seasonal workers in order to create more make-work programs, I want the dollars to stay in the pockets of seasonal workers, and I hope the Leader of the Opposition wants the same.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

The federal minister could tell Quebecers on December 2 - and the Premier just said he has preliminary figures. Will the Premier tell this House what the preliminary figures are of that $800 million that is going to be reinvested into employment efforts in this Province? I ask that of the Premier. His officials in HRD have told me how much would be reinvested in Atlantic Canada, and I ask the Premier how much is going to be reinvested in this Province.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: If the Leader of the Opposition has a number he wants to share with the House, I would be very glad to hear the number.

The Leader of the Opposition is getting up in the most transparent way possible, trying to ask a question, trying to work us all up into a blind snit by saying that Quebec knows something that we don't know; the most transparent kind of partisanship possible on the first day is rather disappointing. I would ask him to put a more substantive question.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

What I am saying is that the federal Finance Minister is doing a better job of taking care of Quebec than you are taking care of Newfoundland.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SULLIVAN: By the year 2001-2002 there will be $2 billion savings per year, and only $800 million will be reinvested. I ask the Premier: The remaining $1.2 billion - does he agree that that $1.2 billion out of those savings, paid for by employers and employee premiums, should be deposited into the general revenues of the Government of Canada?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, obviously, the Leader of the Opposition, who I am sure has a genuine interest in this matter, has not been paying attention to what has been going on in the rest of the planet with respect to the need for all of us in public life to set out reasonable propositions based on reasonable expectations of what governments of any stripe in any jurisdiction can afford. To simply stand there and to work up a sense of outrage because the Government of Canada is seeking in its delivery of programs some efficiencies, as if that were some kind of treacherous and traitorous act, with great respect, I say to the Leader of the Opposition, is not being reasonable.

Just yesterday, the former Minister of Finance of Canada, a former Minister of Finance in this House, John Crosbie, speaking at a service organization in this city, quoted today and covered today in today's Evening Telegram, offered advice to the new Premier of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. And the Leader of the Opposition would be, obviously, given his questions, alarmed at the nature of this advice. The former Conservative Minister of Finance of Canada, former Conservative Minister of Finance in this House, the godfather of the Conservative Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, the guest speaker at the rally in Placentia, said that he would advise the Premier of the Newfoundland and Labrador to behave in a fiscally responsible manner when he takes on the role of Premier of the Province. And I suggest the Leader of the Opposition should pay some attention to the speeches of the former Minister of Finance.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am delighted to hear that our Premier is finally taking advice from somebody.

What I am talking about is taking a $5 billion surplus paid by premiums, and at $20 billion in two years, paid by employers and employees, and putting it into the Treasury of the Government of Canada to pay off deficits, when it is paid by hard-working people, and employers of these people. Now, under the old system of UI, a new entrant could enter the workforce and qualify for UI benefits if that person worked 300 hours. Under the new proposed changes, a new entry into the workforce, or a re-entry, will now need 910 hours to qualify, three times the amount under the old system.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member that he is now on a supplementary and no preambles are required.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Is the Premier aware that it will now be practically impossible for new entrants in seasonal industries and temporary workers to qualify for UI under this new plan that he was a part and an architect of?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, all I can say to the Leader of the Opposition is, I am well aware of all of the proposals that affect the welfare of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador, and I will always do my best to participate in public discussion in a reasonable and informed manner, and represent the best interest of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. But I have to tell the Leader of the Opposition, the party opposite, it seems to me, spent a great deal of money advertising, trying to hold forth this point of view in the last election campaign, and the judgement of the people is reflected in the seating arrangement of the House of Assembly.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

There is much public criticism regarding the UI program, so much that the Federal Government has planned a $2 million public relations campaign. The Telegraph Journal of St. John, New Brunswick, has indicated that our Newfoundland and Labrador Premier will quickly endorse this new EI program once the amendments are announced.

I ask the Premier: Will he assure this House that he will not endorse any changes to the UI/EI program that is going to have a negative impact on seasonal and temporary workers here in this Province?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I am not going to stand up and assure the Leader of the Opposition, who has in his hand a very obviously effective piece of insider information, a piece of news from which paper was it? The New Brunswick something or other?

AN HON. MEMBER: The Telegraph Journal.

PREMIER TOBIN: The Telegraph Journal, and this is the basis of a profound and striking intervention in the House of Assembly that should drive me to my knees and to make a declaration.

Mr. Speaker, I want to have an informed discussion, a reasonable discussion, when the Leader of the Opposition is prepared to have one, about the importance of these programs and the impact on Newfoundland and Labrador, but I say to the Leader of the Opposition, I know him to be an intelligent man; I know him to be, I hope, a responsible man. I heard him say in his response to the Throne Speech that he and the Conservative Party - I believe this was near the end of his speech, and I can find Hansard and quote it back to him if he has forgotten; I know he has not - believe in the importance of being fiscally responsible, of providing an effective and reasonable Opposition, of offering criticism where it was appropriate, but of taking a responsible stand on the fiscal front. And I say to him, on this, the first day, at a time when governments everywhere in Canada - everywhere in Canada - and you cannot sit here in a bubble; this is not some glass ball pulled down over the Assembly in Newfoundland that isolates us from the rest of the planet.

In the Legislature of Ontario, his colleague and friend, the Conservative Leader of the Province of Ontario, needs armed guards to get into the Legislature building because he is dealing with a deficit problem. Some would say he is doing it well - perhaps you would - some would say he is not doing it very well, but the reality is, he has to confront a deficit. In the Province of Saskatchewan, an NDP Government is doing exactly the same thing. In the Province of Quebec, a Separatist leader has come to learn that he cannot just talk separation; he has to deal with the economy of the Province of Quebec. And the Government of Canada, governments, successive ones, Conservative and Liberal, have had to deal with the same reality. The same is true here, and simply sitting on that side of the House does not allow you to pull a stocking down over your eyes and pretend that reality does not exist. The real job of statesmanship and leadership is facing up to it and making positive and constructive suggestions, not offering blind criticism.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition, on a supplementary.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have not received one answer to a question yet. He is avoiding the answer, Mr. Speaker.

I will ask him this question: Under the Employment Insurance program, the Federal Government will no longer purchase training courses and programs in provincial or public or private institutions. That means students now on fee-payer systems, who are in the middle of their training program, can no longer receive the fee-payer system unless they re-qualify for UI. Many will have to drop out of school. I ask the Premier: What alternatives will your government develop to assist those who are left high and dry by this aspect of the new EI program?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Premier.

PREMIER TOBIN: Mr. Speaker, I say to the Leader of the Opposition that the issue of providing proper training, effective and meaningful training for our young people is one that he is right to be concerned with and one that we indeed on this side are concerned with. I want to assure him - as I know he and members opposite want to make a positive contribution to this discussion of this problem and how we can use whatever scarce resources we have, in an effective way - at the appropriate time and the appropriate occasion, he will understand this government is only days old, will find an effective parliamentary forum for discussion of this issue and allow for input, suggestions and ideas from members, all sides of the House, as to how we, in the face of changes that are coming, have been made and more that no doubt will come from the federal side, can take up the responsibility with the scarce resources we have of offering meaningful training with real prospects for work to our young people. That is the most responsible answer I can give him. I give it to him and I hope he will take up the challenge we offer.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is for the Minister of Mines and Energy today.

Recently Newfoundland Power has asked, of the Public Utilities Board, for a 4.9 per cent increase for electricity rates. Bearing in mind that the government is new and that this is a new Question Period - as the Premier has so put it - I ask the minister today, are there plans for the government, this government, to look at that increase in view of the economic times that Newfoundlanders face right now? In view of the fiscal restraint that we are under, are there plans by this government and indeed the Cabinet, to look at this power increase and to stop it from happening and if so, what is the timetable for that happening?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, the Public Utility Board process for reviewing rate applications by a utility is a normal process. The last time it occurred with Light and Power I believe was in the fall of 1991, they have applied again. We, as a government, have named a consumer advocate to represent the consumer interests and that consumer advocate will bring forward appropriate experts to address this. We, as a government, do not interfere with the operation of the Public Utilities Board, we will allow it to operate.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The rules and regulations governing the Public Utilities Board have not changed since 1950. If there is any time, Mr. Speaker, for this government to intervene in a process, which it has not before and I understand that, but if there is any time for it to intervene, I say it is now. Would the minister agree that the rate increases, the differential rate increases will penalize the poor for using electricity, will do nothing to provide them with the money they need to pay electric heat so as to increase the companies competitiveness? Would also the minister agree, Mr. Speaker, that this rate increase will force many people in this Province to dip into their own food budgets in order to pay for lights?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, we should not prejudge what the Public Utilities Board will decide. After hearing the evidence of the company and after hearing the evidence put forward by those who oppose what the company is saying, we must wait and see what happens to that. We have many months to wait. I understand right now that the hearing itself will not start until some time in June, June 10. We have many months to wait to allow this process to be done properly, to allow those who oppose the increase to properly put their concerns. Let us not prejudge the results of those hearings.

MR. SPEAKER: A supplementary, the hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Mines and Energy knows that Newfoundland Light and Power has been, since November, preparing their case to put before the Public Utilities Board. A consumer advocate, which this government eliminated altogether and now just reappointed for this specific case, has only two months to prepare his case.

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member he is on a supplementary now. There should be no preamble.

MR. E. BYRNE: Yes, Mr. Speaker, thank you.

In terms of not prejudging, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say to the minister and to the Premier that this is an issue that should not be prejudged, I agree. This should be stopped right now and that no increase, zero increases should be made. Will the minister commit to bring this to Cabinet and report back to the House?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, maybe the hon. member from the Opposition wants to cancel this objective independent process. I do not agree with that. I think we need an objective independent process and allow it to continue, allow it to hear the evidence from both sides. Let us let that process occur.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

CN announced on March 19 that its road cruiser service is to be sold to Dorman Roberts Limited effective March 29, a week from today as a matter of fact.

While we are told that the trans-Island bus service is not guaranteed under our Terms of Union or otherwise, it is an important service to students and low-income and fixed income Newfoundlanders who have come to depend on it to get to school or to hospital and so forth.

Has this government been involved or sought to be involved in discussions with the federal government or Marine Atlantic with respect to this sale and if so, what has been its position on the privatization?

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, the Province has been aware of, involved, and fully informed of the process that has been taking place for the past number of months with respect to the sale of the road cruiser service.

We have taken that position over this period of time, to express the Province's concerns and interests and also be fully informed of this process as it was taking place. We have expressed formally and informally our support as a Province for the continuation of a trans-Island service, and we have made those views known very clearly to the federal government.

For the information of the House and members however, we should be aware that we are not a direct participant in this process. The process is taking place between the federal government, CN Road Cruiser and the provincial government is simply a participant to the extent that we have been informed and expressing the interests of government in this matter and the public in general; therefore, in saying that, we know at this point, that the sale has now taken place effective as the member said on the 29th of March, and that the company that has received the rights to operate the road cruiser service, has agreed to offer this service, trans-Island, to continue the fares and over the next period, to completely review the service, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South, on a supplementary.

MR. FRENCH: Mr. Speaker, can the minister confirm there is nothing in the sale agreement between CN, Dorman Roberts Limited who, for a while, seemed to have a problem realizing whether he owned the company, whether he bought it or whether he didn't buy it, that would guarantee a continuation of the present level of service. Will the minister acknowledge a statement by CN, that ridership and profitability -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FRENCH: You used to be the minister, you are not any more.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FRENCH: - that ridership and profitability will obviously be the key factor in the determination of the service that will ultimately be provided into the future?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, I apologize. I didn't catch the question, could I ask for a repeat?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

Order, please!

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will try it again. If the previous minister will leave me alone, I will get through it this time.

Can the minister confirm there is nothing in the sale agreement between CN and Dorman Roberts Limited, who thought he owned the company and didn't own the company, and eventually I guess, he now owns the company or somebody belonging to him does - that would guarantee a continuation of the present level of service. Will the minister acknowledge a statement by CN, that ridership and profitability will obviously be key factors in determining the service that will ultimately be provided into the future?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, this sale has taken place between CN and Dorman Roberts Limited, the principal being Mrs. Roberts, and, the sale, as in any business deal, is based on I am sure, financial factors, viability, the provision of a service to a clientele that people want and are willing to pay for. This is a business arrangement. It has received the approval of both principals and at this point we presume that it will carry on and provide the service that has been arranged for. I cannot think that there is any other level of guarantee, and I had difficulty again interpreting the actual question that was being sought here, so I can simply say that the deal as in any business arrangement is based on certain business factors.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South on a supplementary.

MR. FRENCH: Mr. Speaker, the minister stated in an interview on Wednesday that any changes that are made after that time, once the road cruiser service is privatized, will go through the Public Utilities Board for full review and approval, so that is the kind of approval mechanism and authority that will operate over it.

It was indicated on Thursday that another bus company operating in the Province is seeking approval from the Public Utilities Board to operate a competing trans-island bus service. Can the minister indicate to the House the extent of the PUBs authority over the private busing operation, the criteria the PUB will use in making decisions about trans-island bus services, and whether she believes the trans-island bus service could find itself one day in jeopardy as a result of events now unfolding?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation.

MS BETTNEY: Mr. Speaker, the Public Utilities Board has a role in regulating utilities and in this case the transportation system in this Province. They undertake a full review of all factors associated with any application. In this regard when there is an application for an additional service, which the member referred to, the onus is on the intervener, in this case the company who would be providing the existing service, to show that there will be a negative impact on the service and on the provision of the service throughout the Province so that the Public Utilities Board would be able to judge whether or not to grant that application.

I have full confidence in the ability of the Public Utilities Board, with its vast experience in this area, to be able to completely and substantively review this and make the appropriate decision.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

My question is to the Minister of Social Services. On Tuesday, February 20, the Department of Social Services notified Presentation House, which is an emergency shelter for children, that funding would be withdrawn as of March 31, 1996, and later they extended it to May 4.

Mr. Speaker, during its sixteen years in operation 1,681 children were offered quality care in a safe, loving, and nurturing family oriented environment. Today there are eight children being offered an alternate home at Presentation House. What is the rationale I ask the minister for closing this emergency shelter at this time?

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Mr. Speaker, I would like to first thank the member for his question, and I would like to speak a little bit about the whole concept of the movement of this Province in trying to put children in an environment which is most suitable for their care and upbringing.

In relation to Presentation House there has been an effort to move children out of that environment into a normal home, in a foster home. The decision has been made based on the needs of children in this Province, and the needs for this particular service, the Presentation House, has been declining, and that is the basis for that decision.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Question Period has ended.

The Chair would just like to take a minute to remind hon. members that Question Period is governed by our Standing Order 31. In particular I want to draw your attention to subsections (2), (3) and (4) which refer to the use of telegrams, letters, news extracts, that are used sometimes here in preambles.

Subsection (4) says: "Oral questions must not be prefaced by the reading of letters, telegrams, newspaper extracts or preambles of any kind." In (3): "In putting any oral question, no argument or opinion is to be offered nor any facts stated except so far as may be necessary to explain the same; and in answering any such question, the Minister is not to debate the matter to which it refers."

Again, I remind hon. members that during Question Period we have to be governed by our own Standing Orders and for them to keep this in mind for further Question Periods.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, under Standing Order 84 I would normally give notice to the House to move that we propose a striking committee. I've spoken with the Opposition House Leader, and I would like to ask leave, Your Honour, to move that a committee of this House made up of the Government House Leader - the Member for Bonavista North -, the Member for Burgeo & LaPoile, the Member for Fortune Bay - Cape la Hune, the Opposition House Leader - the Member for Waterford Valley -, and the Member for Bonavista South be a striking committee to prepare and report within the first twenty sitting days the members composing the various standing committees of this Legislature. I would ask leave to move that motion.

MR. SPEAKER: All those in favour of the motion, `aye.'

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Aye!

MR. SPEAKER: Against.

Carried.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have a petition today to the hon. House of Assembly of Newfoundland in legislative session convened. The petition of the undersigned residents of Newfoundland and Labrador that: whereas Newfoundland Power has asked the Public Utilities Board to approve an increase in electricity rates; and whereas Newfoundland Power since it has a monopoly in the delivery of an essential commodity in this Province is not at risk of becoming non-competitive; and whereas Newfoundland Power having made some $27.8 million in profit last year is not in need of extra revenue from consumers; and whereas Newfoundland Power in passing corporate income tax increases on to consumers would be defying government's intention of ensuring corporations dip into their own profits to help bear the costs of public fiscal responsibilities; and whereas the expanding low energy use market is a situation, Mr. Speaker, that Newfoundland Power helped create by advising consumers to reduce their demand for electrical energy, and it would be wrong for the Public Utilities Board to try and alter this situation by penalizing the consumers who heeded the company's advice; and whereas many Newfoundlanders who do not use Newfoundland Power delivered electricity to heat their homes instead use wood furnaces because they cannot afford to do otherwise; and whereas differential rate increases while penalizing the poor for not using electric heat will do nothing to provide them with the money they need to pay for electric heat so as to increase the company's competitiveness but will force many to dip into their food budgets to pay for the electricity they need for lights; and whereas it is Newfoundlanders on low and fixed incomes who use the smallest amount of electricity since they have the fewest electrical run amenities and it is therefore the poor who will bear the brunt of a differential rate increase; and whereas Newfoundlanders suffering from the fish resource crisis, the general economic downturn, and deep government spending cuts cannot afford increases in essential commodities like electricity at this time; and whereas not having had a rate increase since 1992, Mr. Speaker, is no justification for a rate increase today in 1996; therefore your petitioners humbly pray that your hon. House may be pleased to request the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador to do whatever is required to prevent an increase in Newfoundland Power electricity rates at this time.

Mr. Speaker, this is an issue that has caused a great deal of discontent and a great deal of anger amongst the general public. I believe it is an issue that affects constituents in all of our districts.

Last night I attended a public meeting - the Member for Virginia Waters was there, the Member for St. John's South was there - where many residents of the St. John's area came out to express their concern about the rate increase that Newfoundland Power has asked for. A number of opinions were offered. Certainly, one was that Newfoundland Power has made a $27.8 million profit this year - absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is profit that they have made after the fact, after they have paid their shareholders their proportion, or whatever their share on a return for that year was. But they feel strongly, as I feel strongly, and as all of us should feel strongly, as consumers of energy, as clients of Newfoundland Power, that any increase in electricity rates at this time is unwarranted and should be stopped immediately.

Now, I understand the answers that the Minister of Energy gave me today, when he talked about the Public Utilities Board operating at arm's length; I understand that. I understand the history of the Public Utilities Board, why it was set up. But I think the minister would agree that the regulations governing the Public Utilities Board need an overhaul, and that government, in this instance, as the public become more concerned and voice their concern, as they begin to organize and petition government and petition each individual member in this House, should stand up and say, on their behalf - on their behalf - that any increase at this time, in the economic circumstances that surround this Province, that surround each of our districts, in rural Newfoundland more so than in urban Newfoundland, but still, any increase in a basic commodity on which Newfoundland Power has a monopoly, is unwarranted, is unjustified, and should be stopped right now. It is not necessary.

There are many points in the petition that I put forward today, one dealing certainly with: `WHEREAS Newfoundland Light and Power has a monopoly...' - I have just covered that. The profit margin that Newfoundland Power has already made in the last fiscal year, already covered; but, Mr. Speaker, it is important for us to realize -

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. E. BYRNE: By leave, Mr. Speaker?

MR. SPEAKER: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: No leave.

MR. SPEAKER: No leave.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I am glad today to rise and support my colleague on this petition. I am surprised that there was no leave given to the member to clue up his remarks on this very important issue, because it is an issue that is spreading across the Province, and I speak on behalf of rural Newfoundland, since my district is rural Newfoundland. I am supporting a petition that my colleague put forward not just on behalf of the people he has on that petition right now, because I can assure you in this House, that petition is going to grow and mount in the next few days, and the people of this Province are going to speak loud and clear on the ridiculous motion by this power company to increase rates.

The truth is, at this time in particular in this Province, people have turned to wood and oil to make it, to just make it, no more than that, just make it through these very hard times. In my district, I, myself, and my family have used wood in the past, over the years, to help ease the burden sometimes of the fiscal restraints, as have many families in rural Newfoundland.

Very simply put, what we have here is a company with a monopoly, who is in a war with another giant business of supporting, I guess, fuel and so on -

AN HON. MEMBER: With a $27.8 million profit.

MR. SHELLEY: With a $27.8 million profit.

- who is in a war with the oil companies, who is going to make the people who can least afford it, in this Province, not just help a company that is ailing, but help a company now making profits to boost those profits. How much more ridiculous can you get than that, Mr. Speaker, when a company making $27.8 million a year in profits is now going to ask the people who can least afford it - the people who are putting a junk of wood in their stoves to make it through the night - is going to ask them to now pay up, and not just pay up to save a company that is going under; we are not talking about a company that is about to go under, we are talking about a company that has a monopoly and is making a fair profit.

Mr. Speaker, what we really have before us here, although the process - and we talked about process a couple of times here today. We all understand the process with PUB and so on. What we are asking, as members in this House, is that both on the Government and Opposition sides, we make sure that we put our voices forward. And we will continue to do that in this House over the next few days and months on behalf of many people. And there is a ground swell starting - I can tell the House this - and many of the members know that, that many people are starting to say this is ridiculous. We must put our voices forward. Yes, the process must go on - PUB must go through their process, but we have to say, as members of this House, on both sides, and as government, that we do not accept that, and we should voice our opinions loud and clear.

Mr. Speaker, over the next few days, I would - the Premier has already alluded a few times to a co-operation of members in this House. I invite any members on the opposite side to stand in their place and also support petitions that will be coming, as we all know, Mr. Speaker - in this House, stand as a representative of people, especially the rural MHAs in this House, who we know probably rely on wood and oil more than people in any other part of the Province, even the more urban centres of the Province.

I know that some of the hon. members on the opposite side were at one of the meetings last night. These meetings will continue around the Province. The petitions will continue around the Province. All we are asking of any member here in the House, is to yes, let the process go on but make sure you let your voice be loud and clear for people who have elected you just a short time ago. You have to represent those people who are in a pinch right now, being squeezed and very simply, Mr. Speaker, being asked by this profitable monopoly in this Province to help them, not just to maintain, but to boost their profits.

Mr. Speaker, no Newfoundlander should stand for that, no representative in this House should stand for that, although the process goes on. We should each and every one of us in our place take the turn to stand and to support the people who are asking us to stand on their behalf. I am sure over the next days and months that members on both sides of the House will receive petitions, will receive phone calls, will be asked to attend meetings and so on. So it is just a matter of speaking up on behalf of the people of this Province. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Mines and Energy.

DR. GIBBONS: Mr. Speaker, I don't disagree with what the hon. member just said. Those who represent people in this Province on this issue should let their voices be heard. There is a place to let their voices be heard where it can have some effect on whether this rate gets approved or not. The rate hearing is before the Public Utilities Board. It is an arms-length agency. The decision is not going to be made by government. We are having no effect on that, other than through the consumer advocate's role in making sure that the consumer advocate represents the public that comes to him, and we have that in place. The Public Utilities Board is operating by standard utility practices that are in place anywhere in this country. We made changes only last fall to the energy policy of this Province that also affect the Public Utilities Board to ensure that they operate properly and effectively.

As of now, I believe there are only seventeen people or agencies that have appeared before the Public Utilities Board and asked for intervener status. I know that at least a couple of the members opposite have asked to be interveners. If they all want to have an effect, they should all try to have intervener status where it matters, before the Public Utilities Board, when that hearing starts on June 10. I would encourage them to do so.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I wish to present a petition signed by 532 residents of the greater St. John's region on behalf of their families relative to the proposed closure of Presentation House.

The petition reads: We, the undersigned, hereby wish to state our opposition to the proposed closure of Presentation House, Newfoundland's only emergency shelter for children under twelve years of age, which as we know, was scheduled for March 31, 1996, and has been postponed to May 4, 1996.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, this petition is signed by 532 residents of the greater St. John's region. I make note, it is the first of several petitions that will be presented to this House on this matter.

Now, Mr. Speaker, in Question Period this morning, I just got a chance to ask one question. The minister replied that her department is in the process of re-examining the whole issue of how we take care of children who are victims of dysfunctional families and that foster homes will be found for these children. I point out to the minister that we are not against foster homes; however, many of these families recognize that these children come from emergency situations. They have been traumatized. They are victims in society. They are often coming from families that are very poor and there is a connection between emergency shelters and child poverty.

Now, Mr. Speaker, since 1980, when the Presentation Sisters were asked to open this kind of house, 1,681 children have gone through that system. This very day, there are eight children there, seven boys and one girl, ranging in age from eight months to twelve years.

If foster homes were all that readily available, I ask the minister: Why is it that three children of those eight have been there since December 26, 1995? Therefore, if we are going to say we don't need emergency shelters anymore, why has your department, I ask the minister, left three children in that home, that emergency shelter, for the past nearly three months, wanting three days?

Mr. Speaker, if we are going to be able to take children out very quickly from emergency situations where they are facing a threatening environment, where they are victims in dysfunctional families for a whole variety of reasons, why is this minister's department responsible for leaving three children there for almost three months? How, then, would we be able to go and take them today, if we have a situation like on December 26, Boxing Day, when all the departments are closed? Where, then, are these children going to find shelter? I say to you, Madam Minister, before you change the system, keep in mind that these types of shelters are necessary.

If we are going to start closing emergency shelters, are we going to start closing emergency shelters for battered women, as well? Are we examining that? I would say to Madam Minister, before you go and close this shelter, look at and read and examine the mandate. Would you please go listen to the 532 people who have signed this petition, and would you please engage in consultation and dialogue and live up to the commitment of your Premier that you are going to listen to the voices of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians; that you aren't going to ride roughshod over everybody every day, but you are going to be articulate, you are going to listen, and you are going to be willing to examine the viewpoints that other people have. Five hundred and thirty-two people say you are doing something that is wrong, that is threatening children, that is going to put at risk children who are already at risk.

Mr. Speaker, before we do something that we are going to regret, I ask the minister if she would today give a commitment that this is not going to be done by some bureaucratic red tape kind of exercise; we are going to have a child-focused, a child-centred program for these victims, and we are going to work on a policy - the Premier said during the campaign: We are going to put the interests of children first - and make sure in this Province that the children come first in our examinations and that we don't let them ride in the back of the Liberal bus.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. OSBORNE: Mr. Speaker, in support of the petition on Presentation House, I would like to state that the establishment has been in place since 1980. Presentation House right now has approximately fifteen years experience in what it is doing. As `Harvey' has mentioned, there has been approximately 1,700 children run through the establishment of Presentation House. It was put in place as a short-term care centre for children in crisis. The concept was to prepare children to get back to their own homes or to go into foster care or to go into the adoption system.

The stays right now are getting longer than were originally anticipated. The stays originally were supposed to be up to six weeks. Some of the stays have been as long as nine months. Right now, there are a couple of children in there as long as three months. These children come into Presentation House as very confused and very frightened individuals and are exposed to a safe, loving and nurturing environment. The parents, as well, feel insecure, frightened, and have a feeling of incompetency because of the fact their children have been taken away.

Presentation House develops an interaction between the children and the parents to try to foster the whole purpose of returning the children to their own homes. If this is not the case, and the children are to go into foster care, Presentation House acts as a transitional period to make it easier on these children.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Social Services.

MS J.M. AYLWARD: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would first like to agree with one of the statements made by the previous speaker that Presentation House has indeed performed a very valuable role in our community. It is an emergency shelter for children under the age of twelve years, and it does deal with children who have been victimized. We all know as a concern for children, and in identifying the needs of children, that a normal home is the best place for those children to be, but unfortunately that is not always the case.

The role that the Department of Social Services has tried to provide is to put these children in an normal home environment, and as I mentioned earlier the goal of this government is to try to identify the needs of children and to keep them in a home environment that is considered normal, and that would be moving away from an institutional environment which is in fact what the Presentation House is. It serves a very valuable role but it does fit the description of an institutional setting. It does provide very good services, and I mentioned earlier, we would commend those services.

The goal is to keep children with their families, and I would like to think that the previous speaker did not assume that foster care is not able to provide a nurturing, caring environment because that is clearly not the case. In this Province we have numerous foster homes providing the best of care for families and allowing those children to return to a normal family environment as soon as possible. The government and the Department of Social Services is committed to children, and it is committed to helping these children return to a normal family environment.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

MR. OSBORNE: Mr. Speaker, I have a petition to present to the House of Assembly. The prayer of the petition reads: the residents of Southside Road wish to petition the House of Assembly to have the CN freight shed on Southside Road either cleaned up and restored or dismantled as we believe it is not only a health hazard but an unsafe structure.

This structure on the Southside Road has been vacant for quite a number of years. Right now it is infested with rats and birds. Apparently there is approximately a foot of bird droppings in the building so it is unaccessible to even be walked in. It is an eyesore. If this building is to be cleaned up, or dismantled, we ask that consideration be given to having a pest control measure carried out to take care of the rat problem. The roof on the structure right now is in the course of caving in. One of the overhangs on a freight door has fallen off and landed on the street. There was a water main break in the building within the past two years and also a fire set by children, so I ask the House to accept this petition.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Member for Kilbride.

MR. E. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

On occasion there are petitions presented in the House that really have no significance to other member's districts, and while some may think petitions are small, or really have no place in coming to this House, I stand to support my colleague for St. John's South's petition today because what he is talking about has severe impact. He is talking about an old storage shed that has been vacant for over a decade, that is rat infested, and that people in the area are -

AN HON. MEMBER: Who owns the shed?

MR. E. BYRNE: It is owned by CN and by CN Marine. It is down around the dockyard, just up from the dockyard. The reality is that there are a number of residents in that area, along the Waterford Valley area, where there is a serious problem from an environment point of view because of the freight shed, the emptiness, and what is happening there, but also as a health hazard. I say to the Minister of Health that, if today, this petition presented by the Member for St. John's South can precipitate some action by officials in the Department of Health, to ensure that that freight shed is cleaned up, that the rat-infested problem that is not only in the shed but is affecting many residents in the area, in terms of rat problems that are associated with their own properties, in their homes et cetera, and the health hazard that that specie carries with them, well, I think that this petition has a place in the House today, and I ask the Minister of Health and I ask his officials to check into the situation and to hopefully, Mr. Speaker, instigate an action where the Department of Health can instigate CN Marine to look into this problem and rectify it immediately.

Thank you very much.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Environment and Labour.

MR. K. AYLWARD: I thank the hon. member for his petition and for the specific request he is asking, that an investigation and a check be done as to this whole problem, so we will get our officials to do that right away if they haven't already, and as quickly as possible. I mean, that is a serious problem if it is existing, and we will have the officials in the Government Services Centre who have officials from a variety of departments in government, look at the problems as quickly as possible and get back to you, okay? We will report to the House as a matter of fact. Thank you.

MR. TULK: Motion No. 1, Bill No. 2, Mr. Speaker, Interim Supply.

MR. SPEAKER: Motion No. 1. The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I have received a message from His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, which I would now like to present to the House.

MR. SPEAKER: All rise.

The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board:

I, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province of Newfoundland, transmit estimates of sums required for the Public Service of the Province for the year ending March 31, 1997. By way of Interim Supply, and in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867, I recommend these estimates to the House of Assembly.

Sgd.:_____________________________

Frederick W. Russell, Lieutenant-Governor

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I move that the message, together with the bill, be referred to the Committee of Supply.

On motion, that the House resolve itself into Committee of Supply on the message and the motion of the hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, Mr. Speaker, left the Chair.

CHAIR (Barrett): Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board.

MR. DICKS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The bill before the House requests Supply in the amount of $1,023,126,600.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) 600.

MR. DICKS: We can probably live without the $600, however the balance I would recommend to the House.

We have consulted with the various departments and asked them to provide estimates as to what amounts will be necessary to keep the government's operations rolling for the anticipated period when the Budget would be passed, sometime toward the end of June, we anticipate.

What the amount is comprised of is 29 per cent of the 1995-96 capital and current Budget. For members' interest, the current amount is below the amount requested for Interim Supply last year. Last year the House was requested and did in fact assent to, or rather vote a Supply to Her Majesty in the amount of $1,054,000,000, so we are down somewhat.

The amount is comprised of the following: There is a pre-allocation based on the following: We have seven pay periods from now until the end of June out a total of twenty-six and we have allotted 25 per cent of non-salary items. In addition to that, we have capital that we are committing for ongoing projects and those that were previously committed as a result of last year's Budget. There are new capital account and current account expenditures which I will list, and the hon. members can certainly have whatever detail they may reasonably request.

There is, first of all, the Roads Program, which comprises the TCH, the trunk roads, the Strategic Highway Improvement Agreement, and that is a total of $49 million. There is $10 million for provincial roads and bridges. There is $20 million for the Economic Renewal Program. Members will recall that the federal and provincial governments agreed to spend a total of $100 million, allocated 20 per cent to the Province and 80 per cent to the federal government over some period of years. At this point we are not absolutely certain which or how many of these projects will proceed, so we have been advised by the officials that we should commit the full twenty at this stage. Should that not be spent, of course, an adjustment would be made in the budgetary process so that the House would have the full information shortly, within the next month or so, as to what the allocation will be in the current year.

There is an amount of $930,000 accorded to the Atlantic Investment Fund. This is an amount that represents the Province's share in the forthcoming fiscal year of a $2.4 million commitment to fund an investment activity that is jointly sponsored by the federal government, the five charter banks, and the four Atlantic Provinces.

Mr. Chairman, that is the essential outline of the amounts that we are requesting. I attempted to provide the Leader of the Opposition with some further detail. The estimates, by department, are set out in the bill and my colleagues and I will be delighted to answer any questions that the hon. members may raise.

Thank you.

CHAIR: The hon. the Leader of the Opposition.

MR. SULLIVAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We have a very new, expensive, Minister of Finance, looking for $1.02 billion to keep this Province operating for the next three months. At that rate we will need over $4 billion beyond the amount that we have expended over the past number of years. I am sure the Minister of Finance is well aware of that.

When we look at the Budget, and the operation of the Province, just this past, I guess, two fiscal years, when we look at the fiscal year ending in 1995-'96, and the previous year, 1994-'95... I know the Minister of Finance is running off to do some further Budget work -

AN HON. MEMBER: He has to leave. Oh, shame.

MR. SULLIVAN: - looking for some more money for Interim Supply.

There are a lot of artificial figures in the Budget, as we are well aware. Back in 1994-'95 the Budget was balanced on $51 million that was one-time funding that came into this Province. There was $31 million, you recall, on the South Coast Ferry Service. There was $55 million that this Province agreed to receive from the federal government to absolve the federal government of any responsibilities for operating the ferry service on the South Coast of this Province. If we recall at the time, the then Minister of Works, Services and Transportation said that: We will have a fund in perpetuity where we can put this $55 million aside, and we will use the interest generated on that, about $5 million a year, or $5.5 million; that is what is costs to operate the ferry service on the South Coast.

That was lumped into the general Treasury of the Province in 1994-'95 to balance the Budget. Now we have to operate the ferry service on the South Coast of this Province out of the general operating revenues here in the Province. There was $31 million came in 1994-'95.

In addition to that, they took $20 million from the sinking fund and put it into the operation costs, which was $51 million, which was an inflated figure, was not a real figure. That is money we had to find in 1995-'96 in order to balance the Budget, and in 1995-'96 the problem became more pronounced. They then went and took $13 million of that $55 million and allocated that to the fiscal year 1995-'96, and used $13 million. In addition to that $13 million, they took $70 million from the sinking fund that is used to pay debts as they become due out on the international market and the Canadian bond markets. In addition, they also used one-time revenues from the sale of Holiday Inns and Newfoundland Hardwoods that realized, I think, in the vicinity of - well, they expected to receive $13 million, was the projection there. I think they were off again in their estimations, as has happened three of four years I think that I have been in this House. The offshore revenue fund was $7 million.

When you add all these together, in 1995-1996, fiscal year, there was over $100 million that are just one-time revenues that we don't have in this fiscal year, that we are not going to have because the money was expended. That is one of the reasons why we have a $230 million shortfall here in this Province. Because we grabbed at everything we could get, sold off what we could get, used one-time funding from the federal government to plug a hole in the Budget now, and now we are going to face a crisis. That is short-term economic planning, and that has caused the problem.

The Government House Leader is....

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, the Wells Administration. The Peckford Administration, many things I didn't agree with either, I say to the Government House Leader. I don't care what administration it was. I don't support some of the initiatives of the Peckford Administration, and the previous Wells Administration, and I will be eagerly waiting to see whether I can support the directives of this Administration. I will be eagerly looking forward to judgement day, I guess, on April 25 to see what the Budget has and how it shapes up with the Liberal red book that is being promoted around this Province and the promises that were made. We will be holding them very closely.

I went through three judgement days in the last four years. Four, actually. I survived three. One I didn't. But I've gone through three judgement days, and I hope we don't have any more judgement days in this Province for four years.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: I'm sure the Minister of Health if he wants to maintain his health, he won't want to see another judgement day for the next four years. I'm very surprised to see the Minister of Health is looking so healthy. Back to pass down the same harsh measures in health care that he has been delivering to the people here in the Province. I'm sure the Minister of Social Services knows quite well what I'm talking about. I'm sure he can share some of those sharp cutting techniques in her portfolio as the Social Services minister.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: I always accept the judgement of the electorate. I've never questioned the democratic process.

In this fiscal year we are now entering, 1996-1997, the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board has indicated that we are going to need $230 million. Eleven million dollars of that I would assume is the last transfer from the federal government, the last $11 million transfer that is going to go into the South Coast ferry service. We put in $31 million in 1994-1995, $13 million in 1995-1996, and the remaining $11 million we are going to get this year. I'm assuming that is included in the $230 million, which would bring it down to approximately $219 million.

The minister referred to some new initiatives. Out of this expenditure of $1.02 billion there are $79.9 million of new initiatives and new direction. The federal-provincial roads bridge program, that is 100 per cent federal government funding. The federal government $100 million, the Roads for Rails agreement, $800 million to come to this Province over a period of about, I guess, fifteen, twenty years. That is where this $49 million is coming from. That is federal money we are going to be receiving.

Economic renewal program, the one that was announced last June, the one that was held over to get announced and re-announced again in January and February, the one that got announced about ten times, the conference I attended at Hotel Newfoundland last June, that is that $20 million. I sure hope it is going to be used in economic renewal and it is going to be used efficiently and that we are going to get a proper return on that investment. I'm looking forward to see how it is going to be dispersed and what type of initiatives are going to be receiving this particular funding.

We all know how important it is to have an Atlantic investment fund. It is good to see the banks playing a part in that and other Atlantic Provinces in a cooperative agreement. We need to see more of that. We need to see more cooperation among provinces, among Atlantic Provinces, to help develop the economies in economically deprived regions of our country like Newfoundland and Labrador.

What I am disappointed here to see - and maybe the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation might be able to indicate a little further - $10 million in this Interim Supply has been allocated for provincial roads and bridge programs. Back in the late 1980s there used to be $40-$50 million spent to maintain roads and bridges in this Province. Now, last year there was only $12 million expended and some of that was a carry-over - the former minister could certainly indicate that - about $12 million of provincial dollars, all the rest were federal dollars. Now, I see here in Interim Supply, in new funding, $10 million being allocated. I hope it is not the case that that is all we are going to see in infrastructure in roads and bridges in this Province. I had the opportunity to drive around every single part of Newfoundland and parts of Labrador, and I can assure you, the roads in this Province are in the worst state they have been in our history.

MR. EFFORD: You must have had you eyes closed, boy.

MR. SULLIVAN: No, I did not. The former minister is spending too much time in his own district. He is spending all the time in his own district. He is looking at roads paved up to the back-doors in his district, but across Newfoundland and Labrador, if you travel down the Bay d'Espoir Highway, you travel out the Gander Bay Road in the spring, the Southern Shore highway, and all over the Province, you can see that the roads in this Province are in a very dilapidated state. In fact, it is going to take hundreds of millions of dollars, an infusion of dollars to be able to get the roads back to a level that we can operate on. They are in very poor shape.

I say to this government, they have spent as much money in four years as was normally spent in one year. We just cannot maintain infrastructure here with Band-aid and patched up approaches there. Infusion of money into infrastructure is one of the wisest investments. Economist would tell you, it is an investment that stimulates the economy and helps expedite business in the Province. We talked about the Outer Ring Road and how that would facilitate business, development and movement of traffic flow and entice business to move into the east end.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) a waste of money.

MR. SULLIVAN: Yes, the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi thinks it is a waste of money putting money into our transportation system. I think it is a wise investment.

It is also important to see economic renewal yes, going into aquaculture and silviculture, very important. I say to the minister responsible for silviculture, it is very important. We need to ensure that our forests do not become like the fish in the sea. We can count trees much easier than we can count species in the marine environment. There is no excuse, it is a provincial control. We complain that the Federal Government did not give us any control and we could not control that. We can control development of forest resources here in our Province. We should ensure that the money is going to be well spent and well directed to ensure that there is a renewable and a sustainable aspect to harvesting trees for the pulp and paper industry, the logging industry in this Province.

Mr. Chairman, there are many, many areas of expenditure here. In health care there are $317 million to carry us through a three-month period. We still have not seen any restructuring plan. We still have not seen any directives where we are heading in health care. We have monthly decisions being made. All I have seen is monthly decisions being made to plug a hole when it arises. When public sentiment rises in a certain area, then they make an effort there. Then they will wait and in three or four months, if another area shouts louder and there is a greater concern, then they will try to address that. There is no general plan where we need to be for health care in this Province. We need to have a master plan of where we need to go and how we are going to get there. We have not seen where we need to go by this government and I say that sincerely to the Minister of Health. I have not seen where we want to go in the health care system in this Province.

MR. MATTHEWS: (Inaudible).

MR. SULLIVAN: The plan? I will tell you the plan we have developed and any aspect, I say to the minister, on health care - the minister promised in this House that we would have, in early fall, a plan on the restructuring. In early fall he said, We will have it by December, in December he said, We will have it shortly, and here it is March, almost back to June again, and no plan whatsoever. People out there in the system are looking for answers and they want to know what this government has to offer. This government made a lot of commitments and one particular one, I say to the minister, in the Home Care and Enriched Needs Program, the minister stated that they were going to cut back and cap people at $2100 a month. Then, in the election campaign, he came out with a frantic announcement that anybody who was getting more were going to maintain that level, and what has happened since is that people have gone out and done reassessments of those same individuals that were given eighteen hours before, and they are now being reassessed and told they only need eleven hours. What have they done? They have changed their method of assessment and capped, when people who need the care are not getting it.

I have spoken to people recently in Gambo, in Gander, and in my district, who have called me this past week with concerns of family members that they are not getting a fair shake, and that they were being misled by announcements and given false hope, and then the rug got pulled out after the election on February 22. I have instances, I tell the minister, that deal with these specific cases, instances that address those areas.

Mr. Chairman, we need new initiatives. We need some specifics on direction, and not generalities. We want to see what the five-year plan for that $100 million is going to be. We do not want to throw out money one year, and then decide next year and next year. We need to fund investments in high-tech industries, as this fund is suppose to do, in aquaculture, which it is supposed to deal with, and in tourism. We need to look at a plan that can assist industry in getting off the ground and carry that to fruition, whether you have to give initiatives in year two, three, four and five, and not to take the $100 million and spread it so thin that no one industry really gets beyond that embryonic stage of development when they can move on their own. It is better to spend $100 million on ten specific areas that are going to get a long-term result than spread it over fifty that are going to keep people happy for a short-term. We have seen too much of that in this Province, to throw money at a short-term problem and not have a long-term economic plan.

I certainly hope that in this new area, and the new minister, will look very seriously at long-term planning in this Province. We need it. We are going to face two tough years economically.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave.

MR. SULLIVAN: I will just finish with a sentence or two, and then later I will again get a chance to continue.

We need to have some long-term planning here in the Province, and we want to make sure that the dollars we have - there are scarce resources in this Province, and we want to ensure they are going to be used efficiently, and one of the duties we will perform is to monitor very, very closely all expenditures and follow them through to fruition to see if they achieve the desired results.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. Member for Cape St. Francis.

MR. J. BYRNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am pleased to stand in my place today and say a few words on the Interim Supply Bill, as it is referred to, Bill No. 2. What I see about the Interim Supply Bill, of course, is that there are not enough specifics. We are asked to approve something like a pig in a poke, I suppose, Mr. Chairman. This Administration, the first day in the House of Assembly, really, with anything to be discussed, or what have you, is asking for $1,023,126,600, and I am sure the previous Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, if had his way, the only thing that Cape St. Francis would get would be the $600.

Mr. Chairman, this is a serious bill to be discussed. I know that government needs the money to continue on with its procedures and workings while we are waiting for the main Budget to come down sometime towards the end of April.

With respect to this bill, itself, I have some concerns with Paragraph 3. It says, `The Lieutenant-Governor in Council may, by order transfer sums voted within one Head of Expenditure to another Head of Expenditure during the 1996/97 Interim Supply.'

If you now look at the votes themselves for the different departments I see some departments that I have to question right off the bat. For example, the Executive Council is looking for $27,405,000 for three months, which appears to be quite a chunk of money for the Executive Council. My concern would be how much money could be taken out of that and put into another department to be spent and the House of Assembly would not really be aware of it?

Now, Works, Services and Transportation are looking for $148,705,700. Again, with respect to the state of the roads in this Province at this point in time, I can understand that they do need a large amount of money. Mr. Chairman, I can understand that they do need a large amount of money to keep the roads in proper repair. I don't know how much money that would be going on repair and upgrading but I would say a fair chunk of it would be going into salaries.

The previous Minister of Works, Services and Transportation - I have been after him since I have been here to spend some money in my district, in Cape St. Francis. The man is a very biased person, I suppose, and he openly admitted in the House of Assembly a number of times - he actually referred to it here this morning - that Liberal districts are where the money will be spent.

I am looking forward to having meetings with the new Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. I know the lady and have had dealings with her in the past, and I am sure that she will not be of that nature. I want to inform her of some of the things that went on in the past in my district. That was probably three years ago I met with all the town councils in my district. One of the budgets that had come down probably two years ago had one sentence in the Budget that said the Department of Works, Services and Transportation was going to look at passing over connected roads to the municipalities. At the present time it required that the municipality had to agree to it, and also the Department of Works, Services and Transportation, or the Department of Municipal and Provincial Affairs, and they were going to being in an act or legislation to change that and only require that the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation can do it by signature.

That has not come to the House of Assembly at this point in time, but when I saw that in the Budget, I went to all the municipalities in my district. I went to Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove, the town of Flatrock, the town of Torbay, the town of Bauline, and the town of Pouch Cove and I made a case to them that they should look at approaching government and be probably some of the first in line to receive some of the monies. If they were going to do it - I thought it was going to come anyway, so why not be the first in line?

I went to the towns and we made a deal, the Town of Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove made a deal with the Department of Works, Services and Transportation to take over the Marine Drive itself and the Outer Cove road going through the community. Those roads are in very poor shape. I think they worked out a deal of somewhere around $500,000 to be spent over two years. Then, I went to the Town of Flatrock, the Wind Gap - I'm going to ask the minister, by the way, in due course to come with me and drive these roads and see them for herself, the state of the roads in that district. For an area to be so close to St. John's - we have the scenic Marine Drive where thousands of tourists come to St. John's each year and travel the Marine Drive, and it isn't fit to drive over. We have the Wind Gap in Flatrock. Again, it is in pathetic condition. It is to the point now of being dangerous to travel. We have the Bauline Line. The town council of Bauline actually put up a sign that referred to it as the longest speed bump in Newfoundland.

I think that the District of Cape St. Francis is in desperate need of monies for the roads in that area. As I said, the previous minister was not too co-operative along that line. I had the various councils in to meet with the previous minister and he just never made any commitments whatsoever. Actually, I was expecting to get some money spent in the district last year but the Department of Works, Services and Transportation cut $10 million from their budget and that was scrapped. That was the deal that had been worked out between the Town of Logy Bay-Middle Cove-Outer Cove and the Department of Works, Services and Transportation. Also, the Town of Flatrock had a deal worked out.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) greater needs in Port de Grave (inaudible).

MR. J. BYRNE: Yes, there are greater needs in Port de Grave; there is no doubt about that. The former Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, at least in his mind there are.

I see here the department of -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) fairness and balance.

MR. J. BYRNE: Fairness and balance? I've addressed enough about fairness and balance with the previous Premier and he didn't know what the words meant.

MR. E. BYRNE: That has changed. It is called Full and Fair Share, now.

MR. J. BYRNE: Mr. Chairman, the Department of Social Services is looking for $101,088,300. I would like to make a comment on that one. When I was going door-to-door in the recent election, there were a number of issues came up in my district, and I am sure they came up all across the Province in various districts. The Department of Social Services came up quite a number of times. For a district that is so close to St. John's with the employment rate probably higher than most rural districts, there is a fair number of people on social services in this Province.

I found that the last Minister of Social Services was - how will I put it to be diplomatic about it?- was a bit cold-hearted. I think what we have to look at - and she looked at facts and figures, and I think the previous Administration was a bit cold-hearted. What we have to look at is the human factor. I have people coming to me all the time with problems in social services. I have had a lot of dealings with the Department of Social Services. We have a number of calls in my office right now that are being worked on. I think what the bottom line has to be - it is all well and good to say: We have to cut our deficit and we have to look at the bottom line, and all of that, but we also have to have a serious look at the human factor in this Province.

The previous Administration took a very hard approach to the running of the Province, from my perspective, and I think the people of the Province deserve more. In fact, from my perspective, as a Member of the House of Assembly, I believe that the previous Administration contributed to the problems in the Province with respect to social services. The number of people on the rolls of Social Services, I think, went from 30,000 up to over 70,000, the reason being to me, I think, that we have gone beyond the point of diminishing returns with respect to the cuts in the Province.

Before Christmas, we had 400 people laid off, and what is the end result? Where are these people going to end up, or a fair portion of these people? A number of them will leave the Province, there is no doubt about that, but again, a good number will stay in the Province for various reasons, family reasons and what have you, and end up on social services. By doing the amount of cuts that we have, then we are looking at less RST received, less income tax received in the coffers of the Province.

Again, the Department of Social Services is an expensive department, but I think we really have to look at the human factor, and I would encourage the new minister to do that.

As I said, we have $1.02 billion for three months. It sounds like a lot of money, but maybe it is needed. Twice that may be needed to get this Province on the road again.

The previous Administration had a habit of bringing down a Budget in the spring, which is normal procedure, of course, and last year they said we were going to have a balanced Budget. I remember our critic for Finance, at the time, standing in his place right here on this side of the House and saying that there was going to be a $50 million to $60 million deficit at the end of the year. Last fall, what did we see happen? We saw the Minister of Finance - I think it was the new minister appointed last summer some time - he came to this House and actually made the statement that the Budget of the previous Minister of Finance, Mr. Baker, was nothing but smoke and mirrors. So he said we needed $60 million, and he went to all the various government departments and cut right, left and centre, and it created a hardship for the people of the Province. By doing that, basically what he did was send out a message to the Province, and to the people in the Province, that: we don't have any faith in the economy of the Province; we don't have any faith in you.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. J. BYRNE: By leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Let him clue up.

MR. J. BYRNE: Okay, Mr. Chairman, I will just say one or two more sentences. I have lots more stuff to say in this sitting of the House of Assembly. We have nine members here who are ready, willing and able to question members on the other side of the House. This morning, when the ministers got up and answered questions, the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, we were very polite on this side of the House, I thought, to the new ministers. A few members on that side of the House were not so polite to some of our new speakers - first-time speakers - but everything in due course. I am sure that we will be a very aggressive Opposition in due course.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think it is time that I got a little bit of practice in on my new role as being the second alternate Minister of Finance. That is not a very significant or serious issue for the members on the other side of the House, but I have been listening to some of the comments that are being made in the debate on the Interim Supply Bill, and I think it is only appropriate that from the government side of the House we respond to some of the things, and provide some clarification and good information to some of the situations and suggestions that have been put forward.

I understand that the Opposition House Leader and the Opposition Leader really are not quite comfortable with - I guess they are a bit taken aback with the level of co-operation and the level of information that is already being provided to them from the new leader of the government side of the House. I understand that there has been more information provided to you over there already by the new House Leader than you have been used to getting in the past.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. MATTHEWS: Now, I am not suggesting that the former House Leader did not give you enough information. I am a little concerned that the new House Leader might be giving you too much information, because I recognize the limited capacity that you might have to take in information in great volume, and certainly to take in good information in quantities that you are now getting from the new House Leader.

The thrust of this new government is to be open, to be informative, to be sharing, to be collaborative and we are going to reach out to the small but faithful band of members on the other side -

AN HON. MEMBER: Tell people about Presentation House.

MR. MATTHEWS: We will tell people about Presentation House. I can only say to the hon. Member for Waterford - Kenmount, that the answer given to the question regarding Presentation in the House this morning by the new Minister of Social Services, had significantly more content and substance than the question.

I can only look forward with great delight and not a small amount of glee, to the responses to questions you are going to get from this side of the House. The hon. Minister of Works, Services and Transportation this morning, not only answered the question, which I am not sure is the right thing to do to some of the questions because really, the basis of some of the questions that you get from the other side of the House have no substance in fact, but notwithstanding that, she answered the question in great detail, with great poise, substance and with good information, and I can only suggest and imagine that the group on the other side of the House, Mr. Chairman, very quickly, will be going back to Kindergarten classes in terms of their function as Official Opposition in this House because, they are in for one rude awakening if they think that new members and new ministers in this government are going to be uninformed or uninformative or non-corporative to them and with them.

We will provide you with quality answers to every non-quality question that you put to us, and we challenge you to do your homework because on this side of the House, Mr. Chairman, we have already done ours.

The seat that one sits in this House I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, is no indication of the quality of the people themselves. You are in the front benches, Mr. Chairman, the hon. Member for Waterford-Kenmount is in the front benches but in the big picture, he is really in the back benches, he is almost insignificant. It is a lucky thing, if the election had gone on for another week, Mr. Chairman, there would be nobody over there except the hon. speakers who cannot now speak because they don't live, and that would really have been a reflection, a true reflection of what would have happened in the election had it gone on for another week. They would have been history, Mr. Chairman.

MR. FITZGERALD: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Bonavista South, on a point of order.

MR. FITZGERALD: Mr. Chairman, a point of order. I think that you, Sir, as the acting Chair here should demand an apology from the Member for St. John's East or St. John's North or whatever the new district is, to insult a former colleague of his by pointing to a picture and saying: he doesn't live. Mr. Chairman, that is unheard of I am sure, in parliamentary sittings in this whole land. It is totally ridiculous. You should be ashamed of yourself and should apologize to the House.

CHAIR: The hon. Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: I don't intend to reply to such specious and spurious points of orders as the hon. gentleman. I don't intend to carry on as Government House Leader doing that kind of thing but I would ask the hon. gentleman not to waste the time of the House by getting on with that. As a matter of fact, I think the Minister of Health was talking to the people right here behind me and the Member for Terra Nova is certainly not in that group.

AN HON. MEMBER: Could you repeat that?

MR. TULK: We don't intend to reply to that. There is no point of order.

CHAIR: Order, please! There is no point of order.

The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If the hon. Member for Bonavista North can give me the addresses and tell me the last time he spoke with the first ten or twelve people who have their pictures on the wall, I would be happy to withdraw what I said. To the question of whether or not there needs to be an apology to my colleague from Terra Nova, one of the finest or the finest Speaker that this House has probably ever known, I have to let the hon. Member for Bonavista North know that this hon. member over here, just because he is not in the Speaker's Chair, Mr. Chairman, doesn't mean that he can't speak. It doesn't mean that he needs somebody to defend his existence as being alive and well.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Yes. I said the first ten, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: I tell you, Mr. Chairman, it is a difficult time, looking at those people and looking at those people, to distinguish the living from the dead most of the time. Because there are times when we look over at the other side of the House and it isn't a morgue scene, but sometimes it is a morbid scene.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I remind the hon. member to be relevant.

The hon. the Minister of Health.

MR. MATTHEWS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was attempting to be relevant by being factual in what I portray as being the situation on the other side of the House at the moment.

To the debate that we are having on the Estimates. The hon. Leader of the Opposition raised some points with respect to the propriety of some of the actions taken in the last government. Now I understand the difficulty that the hon. Leader of the Opposition has in terms of trying to deal with the present and look to the future as opposed to dealing with the past. The members of the House will remember two days ago when he spoke in reply to the Throne Speech that was given by His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor that he spent about twenty-five minutes criticizing the policies of previous governments when in fact the Throne Speech was about the future.

I want to say to the Leader of the Opposition even though he is not there, and to the members on the other side of the House, that this is a new session of the House of Assembly. We are going forward with a new plan and with an invigorated government and a new government to deliver good governance to the people of the Province. To the extent that they want to dwell on the past, they will be judged on their performance on that basis, but this government is going forward.

Some of the things that the last government did notwithstanding were appropriate. The hon. member seemed to suggest that we shouldn't have struck the tremendous deal we did with the federal government in terms of acquiring the $50 million by taking over the ferries on the South Coast. He is asking where we put the money. We put the money to good use in the Province by enhancing and continuing to be able to provide public services that we do. He is suggesting that it was something fundamentally wrong with selling the Holiday Inns and taking that money and putting it into the treasury. We happen to believe that it was the right thing to do; it was the proper thing to do. The result of that sale not only contributed significantly to the coffers or to the revenues of the Province, but it is contributing to the revitalization of the Province generally.

I understand that the several new owners of the Holiday Inns property are now embarking upon a major retro-fitting of those properties. They are spending more money to bring those properties up to a higher standard of service and adequacy.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: (Inaudible).

MR. MATTHEWS: Do I have leave?

CHAIR: Does the hon. member have leave?

AN HON. MEMBER: Yes.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. That is an added benefit to the privatization initiative. I will come back to the questions and to the issues that were raised regarding health care when I get a chance to speak again in the debate.

Let me tell the hon. member before I sit down that in terms of cutting back on services to seniors under the enriched needs program, rather than cut back let me tell him that of the $900 million that we have in Health this year in our Estimates and we spend annually in our budget, $185 million of that is spent on senior services alone. So this government doesn't drop its head or admit to reducing services to seniors. At an appropriate time I will outline to him the level of services that we provide to seniors in this Province. We will compare that to what is done right across the country. We will demonstrate that we have the highest level of services to seniors in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador; exceeds every province in Canada except British Columbia and Alberta.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your indulgence and the hon. members for the time to finish up by leave.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Waterford Valley.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to have a few comments on the interim supply bill.

First of all I'm disappointed that we don't have any more detail. We have been asked to approve $1.023 billion and we do not have any more detail than just one sheet of paper. This happens to be 30 per cent of the Budget for last year and certainly I do believe that the Minister of Finance has an obligation to supply all hon. members with a more detailed breakdown.

Mr. Chairman, we, on this side of the House, want to be cooperative with the government on getting this Interim Supply Bill passed before the end of this month, before March 31, however, we are going to be seeking more detailed information so that we can give more people in the Province a better idea as to what they might expect. For example, I would want to ask the Minister of Finance that if we are going to be facing a $230 million deficit this year, which is what has been said, and if we are going to continue the spending programs in the first three months - which is the indication made by the Minister of Finance this morning - then that will mean that we will have to make up the $230 million over a nine month period.

Now, Mr. Chairman, obviously decisions will have to be made. If we take, say the $230 million deficit and we divide it by twelve then we have approximately $19 million that has to be cut out of the provincial budget every month for the next fiscal year. However, if we postpone that until the three month period we are talking about, then we are going to be talking about $25 million that has to be cut every month out of the budget. Mr. Chairman, we would like to have more details, more than just a sheet of paper that says that we are going to be spending x number of dollars on each government department in that three month period.

Mr. Chairman, we want to know what the government policy is going to be relative to collective bargaining. We know that we have to keep on paying our public servants but in December of last year, in 1995, quite unexpectedly, the Premier, the past government just announced one day that they were going to lay off 400 employees. Now I know the Minister of Health would like for us to forget about the past government. Mr. Chairman, those 400 people who were laid off, who were given their pink slips in December, they have not forgotten. These people know what the past government did and while I would agree that, if I were on that side of the House, I would want to forget about last December as well. I would want to go and say; yes, folks we are going to start again because if there was ever a government that needs to start again with a new, fresh approach, it is this government we have now but when you look in the front benches and you see that the front benches are filled with the members of the previous government, you have to ask yourself a very serious question - with the exception of my hon. colleague the House Leader - when we look at that we have to say where is the new energy? Where is the new vision? So therefore we have to say that the only person that is over there with energy, with vision, with foresight, is the Premier.

So, Mr. Chairman, what we are saying is that we are asked to approve a budget which is basically saying: have blind faith folks. We are giving you one-half of one page and we are saying this is sufficient information for us to spend $1.23 billion. I am sorry, that is not enough. What are the implications here for student loans at Memorial University? What are the implications for budgeting at Memorial? They have to go and get their budgets done and everybody recognizes that, who have been part of the system for years and years. What will be the implications for the public school system? Are we saying that we are going to reorganize the educational system by September? Will there be new school boards? How much savings will accrue from that? Where will that money be spent? So, Mr. Chairman, we want to know more details. It is insufficient, as I said, that we would have such a little bit of information and be asked to approve this budget in five more sitting days after today, really only four because Wednesday of next week is traditionally -

AN HON. MEMBER: It is yours.

MR. H. HODDER: It will be ours, yes, and I say to my hon. colleague that the Opposition will be using next Wednesday as its day for Private Members. We don't see, unless we get a lot more information, why we should give up Wednesday for Private Members next week.

Mr. Chairman, on the issue of health, we want to say to the Minister of Health that we have seniors in hospitals in St. John's today - there are forty to fifty seniors who are in hospitals - who are medically discharged, and they have nowhere to go. Their families cannot take them back; there is no space for them in nursing homes. There is a huge waiting list.

The Minister of Health knows that this has existed for a long time. We would like to know what strategies he has to be able to overcome that problem. That is his responsibility, as Minister of Health, to look at a problem that exists out there with our seniors, the people who are at the stage in their lives where they cannot help themselves any more. What an indictment to all of us, as Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, that we have people today in hospital who are not there for any medical reason but because we have no place for them to go after they are discharged.

We mentioned the 150 or so people who are on waiting lists, in addition to that, to go to nursing homes. Then we have the issues of cutbacks. We have cutbacks to home care. The minister knows that in December there were memos sent out that said: Your home care is cut back from twenty hours to fourteen hours or from fourteen hours to twelve hours. They were all cutbacks. Then, in the middle of the election, there was a memo that came out and said: Well, no, no, we didn't quite mean that like that. We are going to review that, and we are going to change it a little bit, a little bit of change in focus. Then, as soon as the election was over it was back to the old strategies again.

When it comes to seniors, we have to go and let them know what is going to be the level of home care. You have to say to them in precise terms, so families can plan for their parents' future years. We are not against the families sharing some of the costs, but we are against this strategy that says: One month we have this level of care, next month there is something else, and then it is moved to somewhere else, and that kind of thing. Be up front, be fair, and make sure that we offer the kind of care and compassion that our seniors have earned and that they deserve.

So I say to the Minister of Health that when he is speaking, instead of getting on with a lot of rhetoric, he should be telling some of the real answers to some of the real questions. Then he would be doing his job.

There was a time when, where I live in Mount Pearl, we were represented by St. John's North, believe it or not. Back in that time, that was part of St. John's North. We are, today, very thankful that we are not represented by the St. John's North Member any more. My goodness, he is not giving any answers to questions. He doesn't care about our seniors. We want people who are going to speak up for the seniors in our Province.

AN HON. MEMBER: See what happened in your old district when Rex ran up there?

MR. H. HODDER: I say to my colleague from St. John's West, my district represents part of St. John's, and represents part of Mount Pearl. I won the part of St. John's that I represent - decisively - so therefore the assumption is that I could have continued into that area and won the whole part of the district.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. H. HODDER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Justice.

MR. DECKER: Mr. Chairman, I find it extremely difficult to believe what I am hearing the hon. gentleman say this morning. I would have expected a freshman member, who did not know the rules of the House, to get on with such a speech, but it certainly would not be one of our members who would get on with such nonsense. The hon. member gets up and says he is looking for more detail on the interim supply bill. Have you ever heard such preposterous nonsense in all your life? What kind of a document would he want to be brought into this House? You would have to have wheelbarrows and hand barrows to lug it in, Mr. Chairman.

The hon. member knows full well that if he and his colleagues so wish they can use up to seventy-five hours to find out what the details are. That is what this is all about. We are simply following the democratic procedure that has existed in this Province for the last 100-and some odd years, when the Opposition gets up and asks questions about how we plan to spend the interim supply bill.

There was a brief interruption in that democracy, and I'm not talking about Commission of Government. I'm talking about when the hon. member's party was in power. I remember quite well when this House did not give the interim supply bill because we could not get the answers. We couldn't get the House open in the first place, but when we finally did get it open we could not get any answers. Do you know what they did? They did it by a special warrant, a Lieutenant-Governor warrant.

What a mockery the hon. member's party made of democracy, to govern by special warrants. They would not open the House. I remember a former Leader of the Opposition out pounding on the doors asking that hon. members would open the House so we could talk about the way the people's money was being spent, the millions that were being poured into the Sprung Greenhouse. Couldn't get any answers. Now, we would like -

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Oh, oh!

MR. DECKER: Mr. Chairman, I hit a nerve, obviously. When you hit a nerve you know it.

What this interim supply bill is, as hon. members should know, but in case they don't know - and I would have thought that the Opposition House Leader would know - the interim supply bill is - government is making provisions for three months of supply, with a total of somewhere in the vicinity of $1 billion. You make up the budget for the Province for somewhere between $3 billion, $3.5 billion. That is the budget. The hon. members knows that normally, as we have done for the past seven years when we were government, people in the previous administration in power, we always made sure that the budget was presented to the House before the end of March. I can assure you that in subsequent years the budget will be presented to this House before the end of March. But this is an election year when we totally wiped out the Opposition. We certainly did away with all the quality, and a substantial amount of the quantity disappeared as a result of the last election. The interim supply bill, we would have normally had the budget in the House now, but still we would have had to go for interim supply. It has always happened.

The hon. member talks about new initiatives in student loans, new initiatives in the public school system. He talks about making changes to present programs or introducing new programs. The hon. members know that that will be dealt with during the budgetary process. You don't do that in the interim supply bill. All we are doing is asking for permission to have enough money to make sure that the single parents who are receiving assistance from Social Services will get their money. All we are doing is making provisions for six or seven - seven pay periods, I believe it is - so that the employees of government, the hon. member himself included, can receive their pay when the pay period comes up.

That is all interim supply is. This is not any brand new initiative. It is simply a stopgap measure. It deals with the general ongoing housekeeping expenditures and ongoing program commitments, with a few minor exceptions. There are some new current and capital account programs projecting about $79 million or $80 million. This is all spelled out in the document. We have a federal-provincial road bridge program, the old railway deal. If we don't get our $50 million on our interim supply bill we will not be able to award the tenders so that the road work out in the Ferryland district, or over in the Baie Verte area of the Province - all the great road work which we are doing - we won't be able to get the tenders out until some time in September or October, so that little bit of money is put in there.

During the election we announced very proudly our economic renewal program. Now, it is an 80/20 funding program. We want about $20 million in Interim Supply so that we can get on with some of these good initiatives. I don't think it is the wish of the hon. members opposite that they would stop any action on the part of government, that we can get on with these economic renewal programs.

There is a provincial road program, for instance, which is different from the federal one; we want to get money for that. So I don't see why the hon. member gets up and talks about all the initiatives which are not in the Interim Supply Bill when he knows full well that we are not talking about the Budget. All of these things will come up in the budgetary process, and if the hon. member wants answers, or wants a bigger, thicker, fuller document, I would suggest to him that he is totally off on the wrong track, but I would suggest that instead of wasting the seventy-five hours -

AN HON. MEMBER: I gave him pages of information yesterday.

MR. DECKER: He is just not satisfied with it.

What I would suggest to the hon. member, instead of getting up and making speeches which are totally irrelevant, why doesn't the hon. member get up and ask some specific questions to various departments about what they need for the Interim Supply, to take us through the three-month period, while we are waiting to get the Budget through. Instead of getting up and pontificating and waving his arms and making big speeches, get up and ask the questions, and then he will get all the answers to all of the details he wants. It would be totally inappropriate to bring in a document with every single detail in it. If we were going to do that, there would be no point in opening the House. We could just make the document public. The people of the Province would take it and read the portion that they wanted to, and the role of the member would totally disappear.

The hon. member knows that the way the system works is that he is here representing the people of his district, to get up and ask the various ministers what they want to do with the money, what it is all about, and as soon as he does that I can assure him that as in the past he will certainly get all of the answers that he requires, as soon as he bothers to take the time to ask them.

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Baie Verte.

MR. SHELLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am glad to rise today and give a few comments to start on Interim Supply, but I can assure you that the few of us who have a couple of years experience in the House don't need to be told by the minister what Interim Supply means, or what it means to the Province, and the procedures of the Province.

I can also say to the minister, as far as quality of people on this side of the House, including the nine members on this side of the House, and the NDP, and also the Independent, the quality speaks for itself in the election that we have just gone through, and the tide and the rampage through the Province, an election that nobody knew was coming, and nobody had any idea about. So if you want to question the quality of the people in this House, I think the minister will find out in due course and in short term that the quality of people who sit in the Opposition will be asking those questions, will dig into details and so on on Interim Supply, and on budgets and so on; and, answers are expected, and nothing like what we saw today, rhetoric and partisan rhetoric on not giving forthright answers to questions that were not answered in the last twenty-five days of this election. That is what we hear around this Province more and more and more.

As we know, an election takes on a whole different mode because it is media hype and so on, but we do not get to answer the questions that are specific, that will impact directly on people in this Province, and just a few of those are: UI reform, which the Leader of the Opposition asked specific questions on today, I say to the minister. He asked specific questions to which there were no answers, but I can tell you this: All members on this side of the House will be asking specific questions; and, likewise, as the Premier said, we will look for co-operation from the government to answer those questions directly as we see fit.

Mr. Chairman, we can talk about budgets and, like the minister said, maybe some day we will see the Budget at the right time and we will not have to look to Interim Supply, so we can see the details and they are forthright.

Then the minister has the gall, I guess you could say, to talk about previous administrations. Now, in the new face that is on government - yes, there are new faces in government; there are new faces on the government side of the House, there are new faces on the Opposition side of the House, and with that in mind I would like to first and foremost congratulate all new members on being elected on both government side and the opposition side, and commending them for taking the time and committing in their lives to a style of life that not many people get a chance to do, in this Province. There are very few who do it, we are down to forty-eight seats now representative of the total population of this Province. We believe it should be more, down to forty seats, but right now we have forty-eight people in this House of Assembly who were elected through the process of democracy which we hold in this country, to be able to stay in their places and represent their districts on certain issues and speak out on their behalf and for that, Mr. Chairman, I congratulate and commend every single member, especially the new members in this House who were sworn in on Wednesday and became official members of this House of Assembly and say to them that we welcome you - not like we are veterans I am sure, because most of us have just been here for a couple of years, but of course, like the minister talked about long, long, ago and he will tell you many stories about long, long, ago again and talk about previous administrations because he told us so many, Mr. Chairman, but we are not attached to any previous administration, we are not interested in once upon a time, we are certainly not interested in Sprung Green Houses because I don't know anything about Sprung Green Houses or how it came into being or anything else, Mr. Chairman, -

AN HON. MEMBER: Sprung has sprang.

MR. SHELLEY: - and I would suggest to the Minister of - What is he now?

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. SHELLEY: Yes. He thought he was Works, Services and Transportation but he is certainly not that. He couldn't do the job there so now they have him put into Fisheries and Aquaculture, and, Mr. Chairman, I am sure that the current Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, but it is nothing to brag about because she will definitely do a better job than the previous Minister of Works, Services and Transportation, and I could tell that from just one Question Period. She has already done a better job than the previous Minister of Works, Services and Transportation. She actually gave an answer, Mr. Chairman, that the minister couldn't do for two years, and now, he is the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, so I can say to the Minister of Works, Services and Transportation: you have started off on a good job, you have already surpassed the previous Minister of Works, Services and Transportation and I am sure she will do a good job in her portfolio.

As far as Sprung Green House is concerned, Mr. Chairman, all the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture has to do, is turn around and ask his colleague about Sprung and he will explain it all to him, there is nobody here who can on this side of the House. I don't think the Member for Labrador knows anything about the Sprung Green House or how it was administered. The Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi; I am sure he was around when Sprung Green House was discussed, I wasn't. I know the other nine weren't so, Mr. Chairman, I say to the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture, with his experience and being in the House years and years and years, and long ago, and the next Minister of Justice, who, once upon a time, can talk to each other and they can fill each other in on Sprung Green House and if they want the real details, they can turn around and ask the Member for Humber Valley about Sprung Green House.

So there is the Sprung Green House, Mr. Chairman, one of the major mistakes and if we want to go back - but I won't do that, but if he wants to go way back, we will talk about the mistakes of Churchill Falls and so on and so on and then it gets really boring because we have really gone back in time now.

We talked about the future during the election and that is what we intend to speak about but at the same time, Mr. Chairman, you don't just stand in the House after election, when you have the same eight or nine ministers sitting around the Cabinet table and say: forget about what the previous administration did, forget about what the previous Premier did and his policies, forget how they affected rural Newfoundland and how they downplayed the social services in this Province and so on, forget about all that, but, Mr. Chairman, we are not going to forget about that, we are not going to forget about it because they are directly related to previous administrations which we now face as government and they have to uphold their side of the bargain to say to the people of this Province that we are looking to a future yes, but we have also planted the seeds for what is going to happen down the road in our previous administration.

So you just don't shirk responsibilities, Mr. Chairman, and stand up here in the House, although I congratulate the new ministers by the way, to being assigned to their portfolios and wish them well, but I will also say, Mr. Chairman, that the previous, the real previous administration, who are the frontbenchers now and surround the Premier who, by the way, is also connected to the previous administration and what we see coming from Ottawa these days, Mr. Chairman, is nothing to be proud of, and what is going to impact and affect people in this Province, is going to be closely related to this provincial government and its cousins in Ottawa, who are about to bring down the biggest reform in Unemployment Insurance that will have the most negative impact especially on rural Newfoundland and Newfoundland as a whole, but on rural Newfoundland that we will ever see in this Province and if anybody is shirking off that thought, that it is not there, we are going to find out, the reality will speak loud and clear in just months from now, when we see in actual fact that it will have a serious negative impact on seasonal work in this Province and therefore devastate rural Newfoundland.

That is why the new Minister of Development and Rural Renewal must be very concerned about this, and I am sure she is, and we will get an opportunity to converse back and forth on the new portfolio and how it is going to impact on rural Newfoundland especially. I am very, very concerned about it, living in rural Newfoundland and representing a rural Newfoundland district, as I am sure many members in this House are very concerned about it.

As we know, Mr. Chairman, when we went around just a few short days ago and talked to people door to door in small communities in Newfoundland, I ran across it, the same as I know many members on both sides of this House have, people who are desperate and do not know their fate for next week, next month, or next year, with the TAGS situation, the UI changes, and so on. The shame of it is, Mr. Chairman, that during this election those questions were not answered.

As the Premier said there is an Opposition with specific questions which the leader has asked today on the UI changes which are very, very serious and will have a negative impact on this Province. It is fine to say we will go through the process and let our cousins in Ottawa report back to us that they are in the process now and so on. Well, there is no good to close the barn door after the horses get out. That is what we say, Mr. Chairman.

The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation should start to speak now instead of waiting until the last minute like he has done with the fishery, when he stood on the soap boxes all around Newfoundland and gave his spiels about the fishery. I was living with the people in rural Newfoundland and believing that we could have a destiny in the fishery which finally came to being, Mr. Chairman, had been turned around.

Mr. Chairman, I waved goodbye to the last fisheries minister a short while ago, and unless somebody starts to take on the real facts of the problems with the fishery in this Province we are going to be waving goodbye to another Minister of Fisheries really soon. Although judgement day was there, there are always judgement days to come, and with the rate government is going in this Province we will have another election in a year and a half or two years again before things come out. Mr. Chairman, the question is, what were the real issues during the election, the UI reform, schools that are about to close, the TAGS program and so on, the questions that were not answered.

We will do our part to be constructive and ask questions that are pertinent and direct to people in this Province who are going to be impacted personally, on UI reform, on education reform, and so on. We are going to see in this Province that we are going to have a major problem, especially in outport Newfoundland, as we have seen in Change Islands in the House Leader's district just a little while ago.

MR. TULK: Where?

MR. SHELLEY: In Change Islands. Is that in your district?

MR. TULK: That is not in my district.

MR. SHELLEY: Oh, sorry! Where is Change Islands?

AN HON. MEMBER: Twillingate & Fogo. Who is in that district?

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

MR. SHELLEY: By leave.

CHAIR: Does the member have leave?

MR. TULK: One minute to clue up.

MR. SHELLEY: I thank the House Leader for the minute to clue up.

I am sure there are other members here who want to get a few words in today, but we are ready, willing, and able, to get down to work, and we are ready to ask the pertinent questions that are going to directly impact on people in this Province, and we will do that with the responsibility that has been bestowed on us with 39 per cent of the vote that represents this side of the House. We are glad to do that, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Development and Rural Renewal.

MS FOOTE: Mr. Chairman, the new department has been alluded to a number of times, and I guess like everybody here I have great expectations for the department, as I am sure the majority of the members of the House do, given that the majority of us actually represent rural Newfoundland.

I am really looking forward to the challenge. I know there are many out there, and again some of them have been alluded to today in terms of what is going to happen to people who are coming off UI, but as well, I think, in terms of what we are trying to do to develop industry and create job opportunities for the people throughout Newfoundland and Labrador.

Most of you know by now, of course, that what we have done, in terms of the new department, is try to integrate a lot of the existing services that are available to rural Newfoundland and to Newfoundland in general.

Here, I refer to the Economic Recovery Commission which has been disbanded and which I know there are mixed views on, but I have to say today that I certainly appreciate the significant contribution that the ERC has made to this Province. I know there have been areas of disagreement and I have heard Dr. House refer to the difficulties he has had in the past in dealing with the bureaucracy to try to make some headway in terms of getting projects up and running for the Province and particularly for rural Newfoundland. I can appreciate that and I don't underestimate those challenges at all but, having said that, I think the onus is on this department now to look at the ERC - or what was the ERC, and the programs that we are trying to integrate into the new department - to look at ENL and the programs and services that they offer and try to integrate those into the department, to try and bring together all of those services that we provide to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador, to try to make sure that they can avail of opportunities for job creation, that they are not out there in the dark, that they don't have to wait forever to get approvals of programs. My concern here is that maybe too much, in the past, has been operating out of St. John's and out of urban centres. I want to make sure that we decentralize the department.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MS FOOTE: I want to make sure that we put out, in rural Newfoundland, the services that these people need, that they can avail of and that they don't have to wait forever to get projects approved.

I am really excited about the whole concept of the zones and from the briefing that I have had - and I am sure you will bear with me, I have had a bit of an information overload in the past weeks trying to absorb all the detail. It has been a bit of a challenge but from what I have heard and what I have seen, I am really excited about the possibilities that exist there, particularly as it relates to the zones.

What I have been told is that all of the community associations, including the Rural Development Associations throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, have been key players, in fact, in setting up the provisional boards. I am really excited about that because I think that we really have to give credit where credit is due and that is to the many, many volunteers throughout this Province who give so much of their time and talent to try to improve their lot and improve the lot of others. I think, for us not to recognize that would really be foolhardy, especially as it relates to those people who serve on the Rural Development Associations.

I have already sent out a message and I will be speaking at the Newfoundland and Labrador Rural Development Council on April 13, in Gander. I will also be meeting with a group representing all of them at that time, to send the message to them that I want to work with them. I think they have a role to play in revitalizing rural Newfoundland.

We have a fair number of the zones up and running in terms of performance contracts having been signed. I don't know if you are familiar with the process but those of you who would be familiar with the task force report on community development would know that there are nineteen zones altogether. In fact, initially what they had to do was identify people to serve as members of the provisional boards and those members were drawn from any number of sectors but clearly we wanted to make sure as well that we had people on those boards with some business experience. People that people out there could tap into and avail of the expertise in the community.

I think that we should never lose sight of the value of mentors to processes like this. People that have operated in businesses for years, who are now retired, who probably are not very happy with retirement because most of us know that if you are busy it is kind of hard to retire and just sit back and do absolutely nothing. So I think we really have an opportunity to avail of a lot of expertise out there in terms of some type of mentoring process.

So that is certainly something that I am going to be suggesting we give a strong look at, to make sure that we avail of all the expertise available to us. Of course, once the provisional boards have formulated themselves, they then can enter into a performance contract. That, in fact, means that members of the provisional board then identify who they think should serve as members of the permanent board, the Rural Economic Development Board. Then the first stage for that board is to enter into a one-year performance contract. What that contract does is stipulate what will be happening in that region. So it is the people in the region deciding what is going to happen from an economic viewpoint in that region. So there is input from all sectors.

Again, I have not been involved with either of the boards at this point, other than to get the briefing, so I'm really looking forward to getting out around the Province and having an opportunity to speak with the board members and find out how the process has been working and if they are happy with it. Obviously, in some zones they are very happy with the process. We, in fact, have gotten to the stage with five of the permanent boards where they are now ready to sign performance contracts. Those are contracts in fact that put in place a program for five years. It stipulates what they see as should be happening in their zones. Those particular zones, for anyone who is interested, are zones five, seven, eight and nine, and there is one other. I'm not sure what the fifth one is which just came now a couple of days ago and said it was ready to sign the performance contract.

But back, I think, to my role as the Minister of Development and Rural Renewal: Again, I point out that I think it is probably of great importance to all of us here in the House, but particularly to the majority of us who serve rural Newfoundland. I want to get out there; I want to visit the districts. I am going to be calling on all members of the House, not just on the government side, but certainly, members of the Opposition, to help me with this. Because I think your interests are as great as mine, and as this side of the House, in trying to turn around rural Newfoundland.

I have lived in rural Newfoundland. I know what is happening there. I have just campaigned in a district that is rural Newfoundland. And there have been some sad times there. People who aren't employed and it isn't by choice. They are suffering and they have very hard times ahead of them, and I think they need not direction but they need some leadership. They need someone to work with them to point them in the right direction. I want to be there to work with them. I think that is what I'm so enthused about with this government in terms of the whole approach to consultation and to partnership. I really believe that we have an opportunity this time with this new department to work in partnership with the people around the Province to try to improve their lot.

That is certainly my goal and my objective. This is not to be top down. In fact, I read a quote that I thought was very appropriate that was in the submission to the task force on Community Economic Development. It was: Government must be on tap, not on top. I thought that was most appropriate, especially as it relates to this particular department. I think we have to be out there, we have to listen to what the people have to say, and I am looking forward to that challenge. I don't underestimate the challenge. When we talk about limited financial resources available to us to try to achieve anything in this day and age, I know there is not a lot of new money to look forward to, if any. So trying to do something with the existing resources that we have is going to be a challenge.

I think we have to find a way to channel the money, the scarce resources that we have, so that we are not all going in separate directions. I think we should be able, and I will be looking certainly to my colleagues and the line ministers here, to work with me from that end so that I am not operating in isolation here. If you are talking projects in aquaculture, or if you are talking in tourism, I am looking forward to working with my colleagues to try to make sure that the projects that are being approved are responsible projects that are going to improve the communities in which people live, but that we do not have people in one region all fighting for similar projects. I think this is where the boards are going to come into play.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. minister's time is up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave!

CHAIR: The hon. minister, by leave.

MS FOOTE: Thank you. I will conclude by saying that I am looking forward to this opportunity. I know it is going to be a challenge, and I invite the members on the opposite side, `Yvonne' and Mr. Harris, as well, to stay in touch with me, to bear in mind that we are in this together when it comes to rural renewal. This is a provincial concern and it is not limited to just what the government thinks on this issue.

So I welcome your input and I look forward to us working together on this one.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. FRENCH: Mr. Chairman, I will be very brief. I probably won't even be as long as the Minister of Justice, `choppin' block Decker', who talks about quantity and quality.

MR. MATTHEWS: A point of order, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. the Minister of Health, on a point of order.

MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Chairman, I understand it is a rule of the House that members refer to other members by their districts rather than by their individual names. In that context, I think there was a most inappropriate reference made to my capable and collegial colleague, the Minister of Justice.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Opposition House Leader, to the point of order.

MR. H. HODDER: Mr. Chairman, we recognize that these speeches are the introductory speeches by hon. members, and we ask for some understanding. A few moments ago, first names were used, and we chose not to note that, so I ask for some tolerance. There was no offence intended by the hon. member.

CHAIR: Order, please!

As the Opposition House Leader has stated, it is the maiden speech for a lot of the members here in the House of Assembly, so some leniency must be given, but I would remind all hon. members that it is not acceptable to refer to any other member by name. Members in the House of Assembly must be referred to only by the district that they represent, or the ministries that they represent.

The hon. the Member for Conception Bay South.

MR. FRENCH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

If I have insulted the hon. gentleman, I will certainly withdraw the remark. I didn't see the hon. Minister of Health jumping to his feet when he referred to my two colleagues and myself as `no quality'. I could have shot back and said, `We feel we have quality and, in my own case, I certainly have a little bit of quantity,' but I thought maybe that was his maiden speech because all I have heard about him is that he just keeps cutting everything up. I am really interested, in this session of the House, to see what he is going to do in Justice, but I will leave that to some of my other colleagues and to another day.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. FRENCH: I would probably need it for him.

Today, first of all, I would like to congratulate the new members opposite and, of course, on our own side of the House, and our hon. colleague over here, the Independent, on their election to this House. It is, indeed, an experience for us to have the opportunity to come here and represent our districts for our first time, and I look forward to that.

I would like to have seen some more information on Interim Supply. That would lead to a meeting that I attended last night in Holyrood with the closure - and I am sure my good friend from Harbour Main over here is well aware of the closure of the school in the district, and the children being bused off to Holyrood. I hope that somewhere in here, in education, that very soon we will have the opportunity to look and to see exactly where this money is going, what it is going to be used for, because it is a very sad day when we have to see a seventy-two passenger school bus that has to park on the side of a road, and the children have to walk up an embankment that is very, very frightening and very, very scary, especially in the winter months.

So I had hoped that in some of these things we might have gotten a bit more information so that I, for one, could have gone back to my people in my district who have to do something with their school, and I am sure the hon. gentleman across the way in his area if the school has to close.

I just say those few brief words. It is nice to see the new ministers and previous speaker on the new department. It is very interesting having here a new breath of fresh air giving us some new ideas about rural Newfoundland.

I have to make one comment to the hon. the Minister of Fisheries. I know nothing about cucumbers, I don't eat cucumbers. I noticed he waved the book in our direction. I suggest he should probably pass the book along to his own colleague. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Chairman, let me say that the Minister of Finance has asked for a small sum of money. It is $1-something billion needed to run this Province for the next three to three-and-a-half months and there are a number of things - there are a number of capital projects that are in there as well. Yesterday we undertook to provide to the Opposition more information than I ever had the opportunity when I sat over there as the Opposition. Mr. Chairman, I must say that all of our people over here, all of the new ministers and all of the old ministers spent all day yesterday going through briefing notes -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: No, you got more than that yesterday or you should have - going through all kinds of briefing sessions, calling in their officials. Some of them were up yesterday evening after supper, late last night, going through their briefing notes, expecting a barrage of questions about why we are spending all of this money in certain places. Why are you spending, for example, $20 million in forest resources and agrifoods? I went out to Gander yesterday evening and spoke to the Federation of Agriculture, Mr. Chairman, and rushed back, came back on a plane last night, would not trust to the airways to get me in this morning because I expected the Member for Baie Verte, who is the Opposition spokesman I understand on forest resources and agrifoods, to be in here asking me all kinds of questions about forest access roads, silvicultures, spray programs and all that -

MR. FITZGERALD: We only got a half-an-hour, everybody cannot get up.

MR. TULK: Half-an-hour? You got seventy-five.

MR. FITZGERALD: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: No, but I'm talking about in committee. The hon. gentleman must know, the Member for Bonavista South must know that the purpose of going to committee is to get information out of the government side of the House but -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Do you want to get up and speak? Okay, well just be quiet now until I'm finished and then you will have your chance. You got four years, don't rush it.

The Minister of Works, Services and Transportation has the gall to come into this House and ask for $148 million and not a question from over there, not a question, not a point made as to where you are going to spend this money. Instead of that, gets up and rails on about former administrations.

I say to the Leader of the Opposition, why doesn't he stand up and look at the future? I started to read Hansard just now and the negativity in Hansard that came from the hon. gentleman on opening day, in front of all of the judges and a former Premier of this House who happened to be setting out there, he could not defend himself, God bless him. Mr. Chairman, all I seen in this was negativity. I say to the hon. gentleman he should read the Red Book. He should have read his former leader's Blue Book because I tell you I happened to be on a platform with her in Wesleyville and I suspect that if it was not for party lines we would have been shaking hands and agreeing with each other. She was a Liberal, no negativity in that lady but we seen what happened to her as soon as she lost her seat. Some of them over on the other side could not wait for her to really lose her seat. They had to take a little dart at her before she even got the recount in.

MR. FITZGERALD: You should know all about that.

MR. TULK: Yes, I say to the hon. gentleman, I have seen quite a bit of it in my day but I never saw, in my lifetime, anything as immature as that statement that you made on television that night. I have seen a lot of leaders come and go and I have seen a lot of leaders get it - if the hon. gentleman wants to know but in actual fact I never, ever saw such a bunch of amateurs trying to get rid of a leader. I was tempted to call them up and say: boy, I will give you a crash course.

MR. EFFORD: And (inaudible) of turrs.

MR. TULK: Yes, there have been a few meals of turrs and that kind of stuff but you don't go on the public airways first of all, and knife it to your leader.

Now, Mr. Chairman, let us get back to this Interim Supply. The Education bill, for the next three months is $235 million, in round figures. Has there been a question on Education yet? Anybody heard any questions on Education this morning? Anybody asked the Minister of Education what he is asking $235 million for? Not the peep, not the peep.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: I am just trying to get you straightened away; I don't want you to waste all your time. I don't want the hon. gentleman to waste all his time.

The new Minister of Development and Rural Renewal was forced to get out of her seat and tell the House what was happening.

MR. FITZGERALD: What a difference a front seat makes. He sat in the back rows over there for three months sulking, afraid to get up and speak and here you are today, telling us when everything is right and when everything is wrong. What a change in the man! What a change in the man!

MR. TULK: I say to the hon. gentleman, the front row does make some difference. He is now being heard, and he is being heard in his usual fashion, from the seat rather than on his feet, where he should be.

Now, Mr. Chairman, there are all kinds of questions that we expect to hear from the people opposite. I would expect for example, that the Member for Baie Verte - White Bay, would stand up and say: how much money are you going to spend on that new centre of excellence for forestry in Corner Brook? Not the peep out of him, not the sound.

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible).

MR. TULK: Get up and ask the question and we will probably tell you. Mr. Chairman, as I said, the Leader of the Opposition today, was completely negative. Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to encourage the hon. gentlemen to ask some nice, some good questions so that we can give them some -

AN HON. MEMBER: (Inaudible) nice.

MR. TULK: Well, nice questions from the opposition's point of view. - so that we can give them some answers and that is the purpose of my intervention, Mr. Chairman, otherwise we will have to pass this bill -

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for St. John's East.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is indeed a pleasure to address the Chamber here this morning for a few brief moments. It is indeed a privilege to address this Chamber for the first time and I am particularly privileged to be addressing this Chamber as an MHA for the District of St. John's East.

As we all know, Mr. Chairman, St. John's East has had a great history politically, both federally and provincially and the district has undergone some changes as a result of redistribution during the last session of this House. The district now, is primarily the old District of St. John's Centre and also includes a portion of the old District of Pleasantville, which is presently being represented by the Member for Virginia Waters and in addition has a portion of the old St. John's East district which is represented by the Member for Signal Hill - Quidi Vidi.

During the election campaign, as we all did, and by the way, we should all remember, as members in this House, Mr. Chairman, that it was exactly one month ago that each and every member was elected to the House of Assembly on the 22nd of February, and we now have, each, the responsibility to represent, obviously the Province as a whole but to represent our own particular districts to the best of our ability, and I just mentioned that it was precisely one month ago that each of us, each of us regardless of the side of the House that we sit or stand, but each of us was charged with that responsibility.

In going door-to-door, it was clear that there are many issues, Mr. Chairman, that affect the electorate of this Province. Health concerns were obviously a major concern. In my District of St. John's East, I had civil servants and individuals in going door-to-door who would say to me that they were concerned about the closure of the Janeway Hospital. They were concerned about cutbacks in health care, cutbacks on those individuals who work in the health industry; concerned about the closure of the Grace General Hospital. And, as we see from the schedule of expenditures that was given to us today, we have, in today's schedule, under Head of Expenditures, in health, an expenditure of over $300,000. So, despite the -

AN HON. MEMBER: Million.

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Million, thank you. But despite the expenses, and despite the expenditures, it still seems to me that in meeting the electorate of this Province, and I am sure all of us, perhaps, found the same thing, that despite the expenditures it is still a number one concern and priority.

Also, in going door-to-door and in meeting the electorate of St. John's East there were concerns raised with respect to education. The uncertainty of education reform is certainly uppermost in the minds of most people of this Province, the uncertainty of the impact of the regulations of the proposed Schools Act; for example, the busing concerns, the viability implications and, of course, the concealed information with respect to the proposed confiscation of school property. These are the issues that the people of not only St. John's East but I am sure, particularly, maybe in more rural areas of this Province would be concerned about.

In my district I found that a significant proportion of the electorate were senior citizens. We have St. Patrick's Mercy Home, which is contained physically within St. John's East, and we have the Glenbrook Lodge, which is a home under the jurisdiction of the Salvation Army, also in the district. In the centre of the district we have areas such as Churchill Square apartments, Allendale apartments, Pine Bud apartments, almost all of which are being lived in by senior citizens of that district. And in going door-to-door, and in meeting the people of this area, we find, and I found, and I am sure again many of us did find in going door-to-door, that senior citizens in this Province are concerned. They are concerned about cutbacks in health. They are concerned about what opportunity is there for the betterment in their lives. They are concerned about the fact that any pension, particularly provincial government pensions, have not been appropriately indexed and, in fact, in some cases have gone in the opposite direction. So these are the concerns that we meet in meeting the constituents that we represent.

Environmental issues, the availability of legal aid, it is unfortunate that the hon. Minister of Justice is not here because I would like to make this point, that there are many people in this Province who feel they cannot get legitimate legal representations simply because they cannot afford it, and because of funding cutbacks with respect to the legal aid budget, it is not possible for them to get that. That is a serious concern and it is a consideration that I know I as Justice critic will be bringing to the floor of this House in Question Period in dealing with particular issues with the Justice minister.

Student Aid and funding contained within the district of St. John's East are the residences of Memorial University, Burton's Pond Apartments, and Paton College, and it is clear that students have major, major concerns with respect to funding arrangements and student aid arrangements, largely, obviously, in part because of the relationship between the federal government of this country and the provincial government. These are concerns that have to be addressed, and will be addressed by this particular opposition.

In the last few days, Mr. Chairman, I have had an opportunity to meet at three different and, in fact, unrelated examples of where constituents wanted to voice concerns in particular areas. The first at my old high school, at Gonzaga High School, parents numbering 500 showed up for a meeting last week to voice their concerns with respect to the proposed legislation concerning school reform, 500 parents showed up Monday night at the high school.

The theme of the meeting, by the way, was to allow the Jesuits to stay. The Jesuits are an old teaching order in this Province. They have taught here for approximately thirty-five years and they have a history internationally of some 500 years, and there is concern that with the proposed legislation which is being endorsed obviously by this government, that there are going to be many significant losses and that is just perhaps one example. In attending that meeting I met 500 parents who voiced serious concerns about the future of that school.

Secondly, my colleague the Member for Cape St. Francis and I attended a meeting at the City of St. John's with respect to proposed increases in the water and sewer rates of this city. Fortunately, through intervention, through an 8000 name petition that particular motion was rescinded. This is the type of involvement that I know, I, as an MHA, and I am sure the Opposition as a whole, will become continually involved in, representing the people at grass roots level, representing their interests to ensure that when there are concerns expressed they are dealt with immediately in a humanitarian way.

There was a meeting last night with respect to a development proposal on the old Mount Cashel property, again, in the District of St. John's East. It was interesting to hear both sides. Obviously, the developer is interested in both commercial development and a residential development. Many citizens were present and were concerned about the parking implications, the fact that an elementary school is adjacent to that property, and the fact that obviously, there could be some concern with respect to reduction in the value of their property.

These are the issues that are evident. These are the issues only in the last three or four weeks that I have had to deal with in representing the constituents in St. John's East. Granted, in many respects they are local issues in that sense. But in the broad sense, when we look at its impact on education generally, the impact on education reform, when we look at citizens - whether it is this municipality or, Mr. Chairman, any other municipality in the Province which is saying to its elected officials: We cannot afford a penny more for any services you may feel that have to be appropriate in that particular instance. The problem -

CHAIR: Order, please!

The hon. member's time is up.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: By leave!

MR. OTTENHEIMER: Thank you. I will conclude by simply saying that obviously, the challenge is with all of us who have been now elected for one month to represent the people of this Province to the best of our ability. We all, as individual members, are given the particular responsibility and charge to represent our districts to the best of our ability. The challenge to government, obviously, and to the members on the opposite side, in dealing with the expenditures as we see today in Interim Supply, is to fund projects as appropriately, as honestly and as wisely as possible.

It is our challenge as an Opposition - and I wish to echo the point that was made by my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, on the day of the Speech from the Throne - to be ensuring that the members opposite will do that. We will challenge that at every opportunity, and hopefully together, as a group, we can do what is best for the people of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Thank you.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

CHAIR: The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

MR. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. OSBORNE: I would just like to address the hon. the Minister of Fisheries for a moment.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. OSBORNE: Well, I am just making a statement, Mr. Minister. I see you waving your Sprung books around and trying to remind us all of Sprung. There is neither one of us here who sat in the House during the Sprung incident.

MR. FITZGERALD: One on the other side.

MR. OSBORNE: One on the other side. I shall remind you that that is an issue of the past, and if you want to bring up issues of the past, Mr. Minister, you will remember that Brian Tobin and Mr. Chrétien promised jobs, jobs, jobs and again Mr. Wells promised to bring every mother's son home. Now, Mr. Minister -

CHAIR: Order, please!

I would ask the Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs to withdraw that remark.

MR. A. REID: I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, did you refer to me that time, Sir?

CHAIR: I asked the hon. Minister of Municipal and Provincial Affairs to withdraw the remark that he made twice.

MR. A. REID: What I said to my hon. colleague to the left? I certainly will, Sir.

CHAIR: I would ask the hon. minister to withdraw -

MR. A. REID: Yes, I will withdraw. I apologize, in fact, to the hon. member to the left.

CHAIR: Order, please!

I asked the minister to withdraw.

MR. A. REID: I withdraw.

CHAIR: Okay. The hon. the Member for St. John's South.

MR. OSBORNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Perhaps `Mr. Efford' should seek advice from - I am sorry, perhaps the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture should seek advice from the Minister of Health. You seem to be suffering from selective senility, Sir. Neither one of the members on this side, Sir, sat in the House during Sprung.

MR. EFFORD: (Inaudible).

MR. OSBORNE: You are bringing up some of the bad points. Why do you not look at your own side, Sir?

In conclusion, I would like to welcome the new members on both sides of the House, and I would like to thank the members of my district for giving me the opportunity to represent them.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

CHAIR: The hon. the Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture.

SOME HON. MEMBERS: Hear, hear!

MR. EFFORD: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I had not intended to say anything in the House today, except to go over some briefing notes that I had in front of me, and expected just to sit down and enjoy the morning, and just enjoy the new members coming into the House, and to give some of them an opportunity to make their maiden speeches in the House, and those who did not, and the other ones, to sit and listen. I think the few little quirks that went back and forth across the House were just done in leisure and in a gesture to create an atmosphere in the House that you normally have to deal with and carry on with on a day-to-day basis. Believe me, I had not expected a new member to get up in the manner in which he did, because I had waved the famous pickle book to the hon. members just as a little daunting - a little gesture across the House, and the manner in which he took it or he approached it.

Let me give the hon. member, the new member, a lesson in what this House is all about. This House gives each member an opportunity on each side to remind each other of the miserable financial mess that this Province is experiencing today, that the $7.2 billion that we owe was not caused by this government on this side of the House, this government over the past four or five years - it was caused by seventeen years of total mismanagement. That is what it was all about, seventeen years of total mismanagement.

I will give the hon. member a full lesson on Monday, at the first opportunity to speak on Monday, because I will now take leave of the House to move adjournment, to remind the hon. member that if he is here in the House on Monday afternoon he will get the remainder of what I have to say about the former government in power.

CHAIR: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee rise, report progress, and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, that the Committee rise, report progress and ask leave to sit again, Mr. Speaker returned to the Chair.

MR. SPEAKER (Snow): The hon. the Member for Bellevue.

MR. BARRETT: Mr. Speaker, the Committee of the Whole on Supply have considered the matters to them referred, have directed me to report some progress and ask leave to sit again.

On motion, report received and adopted, Committee ordered to sit again on tomorrow.

MR. SPEAKER: The hon. the Government House Leader.

MR. TULK: Mr. Speaker, I move the adjournment of the House until 2:00 p.m. on Monday, March 25, not March 26 - I haven't quite reached March 26. At that time, we will be doing Interim Supply again.

On motion, the House at its rising adjourned until tomorrow, Monday, at 2:00 p.m.